Wishful Thinking
by weezerz2490
Summary: It's the 80s, the time of myths and legends is long past—there's no way a creature from a fairy tale could be real, right? Wrong. Very wrong, as Sarah and Stephanie Williams are about to find out. Will the two sisters be able to save their baby brother from the Goblin King, or will the tension from their strained relationship get in the way?
1. Chapter 1

Author's note: Hi, there! I've been a real _Labyrinth_ kick lately, and have just recently acquired the novel version of the movie, so this story will be a mix of both and written in the same style as the novel. Also, if you're looking for another good _Labyrinth_ fanfiction, I have to recommend "Powerless" by twosugarsblack. It's a really great and imaginative story! I even plan on borrowing some of twosugarsblack's ideas in the future (but I have permission, so please ask before doing this).  
By the way, my OC Stephanie will be played by a young Holly Marie Combs.

I own nothing but my OC.

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 **Chapter 1: The White Owl**

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In a normal town, inside her father's house, a young girl with dark hair and equally dark eyes was seated at the kitchen table, who wore her hair pulled half up in a scrunchie, a pastel sweater with interlocking stripes of different colors over a pale yellow collared-shirt, faded blue jeans pegged to show off her slouchy socks, and a pair of pink and white _L.A. Gear_ sneakers. She was tapping the end of her pencil against the corner of her mouth as she sat contemplating a particularly difficult algebra problem on one of the worksheets that she had been given to finish over the weekend for school. Stephanie could have started on them earlier, but the weather was so nice that she had decided to practice some of her fencing exercises for a couple hours, so she wouldn't suffer too much during conditioning on Monday. One of the great things about her childhood home was its big yard. You could do anything in that yard. She looked up with a smile and a far away look in her eyes, remembering all the good times her family had out there before her parents split. Her smile fell. The divorce hadn't come as a surprise; even at age ten she could see the signs.

But it had still hurt. Every now and then, she would get a lonely feeling when she thought about how close they all used be. Now, she lived with her mother and her boyfriend, and frequent costar, Jeremy—well, he was over so often, he may as well have lived with them—while her older sister lived with their father and their stepmother and their baby half-brother. Sarah didn't like their stepmother and seemed to have a hard time adjusting to Toby's addition to the family, but Stephanie didn't think they were so bad.

It might be strange to think this way, but Stephanie actually liked it when Irene nagged her and asked all the normal questions parents were expected to pester their children with, because she knew it meant their stepmother cared, and she heard them so rarely from her own mother. And it was nice to have home-cooked meals for a change.

Stephanie loved her mother, Linda, and she had become close to Jeremy too, but sometimes she wondered who the real adult was among the three of them. Her mother and Jeremy were adults, of course, but they were more like adult cats: they could sort of make it on their own, but they also sort of needed someone to take care of them. They were great actors and very passionate about their work, but neither of them were very practical when left to their own devices, and Linda's mercurial moods and tendency to use acting to avoid real life could make her very difficult to deal with sometimes. She knew her mother was disappointed that she was more interested in fencing and writing than in becoming an actress, saying it was a waste. In fact, many times Stephanie actually felt that she received more support from Jeremy than she did from her own mother…

Stephanie blinked and straightened up, stopping herself when her thoughts started to get too dark. It was then that she realized the sky outside had darkened as well. It was quiet downstairs, but she could hear her father and stepmother moving around upstairs, getting ready to go out. Stephanie wondered if her sister was still at the park. She would have gone with her, but their relationship had been strained lately.

Curious about the time, Stephanie glanced at the digital clock on the microwave, it was already 6:45 PM. Stephanie bit her lip. She hoped Sarah got her butt home before their father and Irene finished their primping, because she would really rather not have to listen to another fight between her sister and stepmother.

Meanwhile, nobody saw the owl, white in the moonlight, black against the stars, nobody heard him as he glided on silent wings of velvet. The owl saw and heard everything. He settled in a tree, his claws hooked on a branch, and he stared down at another girl, who was standing in the glade below. The wind moaned, rocking the branch, scudding low clouds across the evening sky. It lifted the dark hair of the girl. The owl was watching her, with his round, dark eyes.

The girl moved slowly from the trees toward the middle of the glade, where a pool glimmered. She was concentrating. Each deliberate step took her nearer to her purpose. Her hands were open, and held slightly in front of her. The wind sighed again in the trees. It blew her cloak tightly against her slender figure, and rustled her hair around her wide-eyed face. Her lips were parted.

"Give me the child," Sarah said, in a voice that was low, but firm with the courage her quest needed. She halted, her hands still held out. "Give me the child," she repeated. "Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Goblin City, to take back the child you have stolen." She bit her lip and continued, "For my will is as strong as yours… and my kingdom as great…" She closed her eyes tightly. Thunder rumbled. The owl blinked, once.

"My will is as strong as yours." Sarah spoke with even more intensity now. "And my kingdom as great…" She frowned, and her shoulders dropped.

"Oh, damn," she muttered.

Reaching under her cloak, she brought out a book, the one her younger sister had bought for her. Its title was _The Labyrinth_. The red cloth-bound cover was aged, and a little worn. Stephanie had found it nestled amongst some used books in one of her favorite shops while looking for a decent copy of Christina Rossetti's _Goblin Market and Other Poems_. After thumbing through it, she had decided the book might be something Sarah would like, and she had been right. Holding the book up before her, Sarah read aloud from it. In the fading light, it was not easy to make out the words.

"You have no power over me…"

She got no further. Another clap of thunder, nearer this time, made her jump. It also alarmed a big, shaggy sheepdog, who had not minded sitting by the pool and being admonished by Sarah, but who now decided that it was time to go home, and said so with several sharp barks.

Sarah held her cloak around her. It did not give her much warmth, being no more than an old curtain, cut down, and fastened at the neck by a glass brooch. She ignored Merlin, the sheepdog, while concentrating on learning the speech in the book. "You have no power over me," she whispered. She closed her eyes again and repeated the phrase several times.

A clock above the little pavilion in the park chimed seven times and penetrated Sarah's concentration. She stared at Merlin. "Oh, no," she said. "I don't believe it. That _was_ seven, wasn't it?"

Merlin stood up and shook himself, sensing that some more interesting action was due. Sarah turned and ran. Merlin followed. The thunderclouds splattered them both with large drops of rain.

The owl had watched it all. When Sarah and Merlin left the park, he sat still on his branch, in no hurry to follow them. This was his time of day. He knew what he wanted. An owl is born with all his questions answered.

All the way down the street, which was lined on both sides with privet-hedged Victorian houses similar to her own, Sarah was muttering to herself, "It's not _fair_ , it's not _fair_." The mutter had turned to a gasp by the time she came within sight of her home. Merlin, having bounded along with her on his shaggy paws, was wheezing, too. His mistress, who normally moved at a gentle, dreamy pace, had this odd habit of liking to sprint home from the park in the evening. Perhaps that owl had something to do with it. Merlin was not sure. He didn't like that owl, he knew that.

"It's not _fair_." Sarah was close to sobbing. The world at large was not fair, hardly ever, but in particular her stepmother was ruthlessly not fair to her. There she stood now, in the front doorway of the house, all dressed up in that frightful, dark blue evening gown of hers, the fur coat left open to reveal the low cut of the neckline, the awful necklace vulgarly winking above her freckled breast, and—wouldn't you know?—she was looking at her watch. Not just looking at it, but staring at it, to make good and sure that Sarah would feel guilty before she was accused, again.

As Sarah came to a halt on the path in the front garden, she could hear her baby brother, Toby, bawling inside the house. He was her half brother really, but she did not call him that, not since her school friend Alice had asked, "What's the other half of him, then?" and Sarah had been unable to think of an answer. "Half nothing-to-do-with-me." That was no good. It wasn't true, either. Sometimes she felt fiercely protective of Toby, wanted to dress him up and carry him in her arms and take him away from all this, to a better place, a fairer world, an island somewhere, perhaps. At other times—and this was one—she hated Toby, who had twice as many parents in attendance on him as she had. When she hated Toby, it frightened her, because it led her into thinking about how she could hurt him. 'There must be something wrong with me,' she would reflect, 'that I can even think of hurting someone I dote upon; or is it that there is something wrong in doting upon someone I hate?' She wished she had a friend who would understand the dilemma, and maybe explain it to her, but there was no one. Her friends at school would think her a witch if she mentioned the idea of hurting Toby, and as for her father, it would frighten him even more than it frightened Sarah herself. Perhaps the only person whom she could even hope might be able to understand her was her sister. They used to be so close that they would tell each other everything, and Stephanie, despite being a year younger, had always been a giver of excellent advice and a terrific audience, who could listen all the way through to the end of her list of complaints without ever once interrupting. But ever since their parents' divorce, Sarah had begun to grow increasingly envious of her little sister. It had started with the decision that Stephanie would get to live with their beautiful mother, while she was stuck with their boring father, a nagging stepmother, and, in time, a screaming baby. And then, Stephanie had to go and change. She was no longer the cute little sister who used to follow her around like a baby duck and cheerfully agree to go along with whatever Sarah's heart desired. Now she was always either busy doing something else when Sarah wanted to hang out, or she just _had_ to be there when Sarah wanted to spend the limited time she had with their mother alone, with just her. Why did their mother have to choose Stephanie over _her_? It wasn't _fair_. Sarah still loved Stephanie and didn't hate her the way she hated Toby, but sometimes she just wanted to scream, especially whenever her sister tried to behave reasonably towards their stepmother, rather than taking _her_ side, as she should. So she kept the perplexity towards both of her siblings well hidden.

Sarah stood before her stepmother and deliberately held her head high. "I'm sorry," she said, in a bored voice, to show she wasn't sorry at all, and anyway it was unnecessary to make a _thing_ out of it.

"Well," her stepmother told her, "don't stand out there in the rain. Come on." She stood aside, to make room for Sarah to pass her in the doorway, and she glanced again at her wristwatch.

Sarah made a point of never touching her stepmother, not even brushing against her clothes. She edged inside close to the doorframe. Merlin started to follow her.

"Not the dog," her stepmother said.

"But it's pouring."

Her stepmother wagged her finger at Merlin, twice.

"In the garage, you," she commanded. "Go on."

Merlin dropped his head and loped around the side of the house.

Stephanie, who could see the whole scene from inside the house, quietly slipped off to grab a towel and make sure poor Merlin made it into the garage so she could dry him off. She could understand why Irene didn't want him dripping water and tracking mud on her clean floors, but the family dog wasn't exactly a spring chicken anymore. Stephanie didn't want him to get a cold.

Sarah didn't see Stephanie, but she watched Merlin go and bit her lip. 'Why,' she wondered for the trillionth time, 'does my stepmother always have to put on this performance when they go out in the evening?' It was so _hammy_ —that was one of Sarah's favorite words, she had heard her mother's costar, Jeremy, use it to put down another actor in the play they were doing—such a _rag-bag of over-the-top-clichés._ She remembered how Jeremy had sounded French when he said _clichés,_ thrilling her with his sophistication. Why couldn't her stepmother find _a new way into the part?_ Oh, she loved the way in which Jeremy talked about other actors. She was determined to become an actress herself, so that she could talk like that all the time. Her father seldom talked at all about people at his office, and when he did it was dreary in comparison.

Her stepmother closed the front door, looked at her watch once more, took a deep breath, and started one of her clichéd speeches. "Sarah, you're an hour late…"

Sarah opened her mouth, but her stepmother cut her off, with a little, humorless smile.

"Please let me finish, Sarah. Your father and I go out very rarely—"

"You go out every weekend," Sarah interrupted rapidly.

Her stepmother ignored that. "—and I ask you to babysit only if it won't interfere with your plans."

"How would you know?" Sarah had half turned away, so as not to flatter her stepmother with her attention, and was busy with putting her book on the hall stand, unclipping her brooch, and folding the cloak over her arm. "You don't know what my plans are. You don't ask me. Besides, Stephanie's here, too, this weekend. Why can't she do it instead?" She glanced at her own face in the mirror of the hall stand, checking that her expression was cool and poised, not _over the top._ She liked the clothes she was wearing: a cream-colored shirt with full sleeves, a brocaded waistcoat loosely over the shirt, blue jeans, and a leather belt. She turned farther away from her stepmother, to check on how her shirt hung from her breasts down to her waist. She tucked it in a little at the belt, to make it tighter.

Her stepmother was watching her coldly. She did not appreciate Sarah's attitude. Irene wished she was half as easy to deal with as Robert's other daughter. Compared to Sarah, Stephanie was an absolute delight. "Well, we feel better having both of you here to look after him. And I am assuming you would tell me if you had a date. I would _like_ it if you had a date. A fifteen-year-old girl _should_ have dates." She was concerned about how, even at this age, Sarah seemed more interested in running around on her own, playing dress up and make-believe, than normal teenager activities. She should socialize more with other kids her age.

'Well,' Sarah was thinking, 'if I did have a date you are the _last_ person I would tell. What a hammy—no, _tacky—_ view of life you do have.' She smiled grimly to herself. 'Perhaps I will have a date,' she thought, 'perhaps I will, but you will _not_ like it, not one bit, when you see who's dating me. I doubt you will see him. All you will know about it is hearing the front door shut behind me, and you will sneak to the window, as you always do, and poke your nose between those horrid phony-lace curtains you put up there, and you will see the taillights of a wicked dove-gray limousine vanishing around the corner. And after that, you will keep seeing pictures in the magazines of the two of us together in Bermuda, and St. Tropez, and Benares. And there will be nothing at all you can possibly do about it, for all your firm views on bedtimes and developmental psychology and my duties and rolling up the toothpaste tube from the bottom. Oh, stepmother, are you going to be sorry when you read in _Vogue_ about the cosmic cash that Hollywood producers are offering us for—'

Sarah's father came down stairs into the hall. In his arms he was carrying Toby, clad in red-and-white-striped pajamas. He patted the baby's back. "Oh, Sarah," he said mildly, "you're here at last. We were worried about you."

"Oh, leave me alone!" Afraid that she might be close to tears, Sarah gave them no chance to reason with her. She ran upstairs. They were always so _reasonable_ , particularly her father, so long-suffering and mild with her, so utterly convinced that they were always obviously in the right, and that it was only a matter of time before she consented to do as they wished. Stephanie was like that too, at times. It was becoming all too clear that her sister took after their father in more than just looks. Why did their father always take that woman's side? Why couldn't Stephanie always take hers, like she used to? Their mother never wore that pained look of tolerance. She was a woman who could shout and laugh and hug you and slap you all within a minute or two. When she and Sarah had a quarrel, it was an explosion. Five minutes later, it was forgotten.

In the hallway, her stepmother had sat down, still in her fur coat. Wearily, she was saying, "I don't know _what_ to do anymore. She treats me like the wicked stepmother in a fairy tale, no matter what I say. I have tried, Robert."

"Well…" Sarah's father patted Toby thoughtfully. "It _is_ hard to have your mother walk out on you at that age. At any age, I suppose."

"That's what you always say. And of course you're right. But will she never change? Stephanie, as quiet and shy as she can be, was having a difficult time too, but she managed to warm up to me. I just wish Sarah could learn to do the same."

Holding Toby in one arm, Robert patted his wife on the shoulder. "I'll go talk to her."

Thunder rumbled again. A squall of raindrops clattered on the windows.

Stephanie, who had been listening from the hall around the corner, chose that moment to approach her stepmother. "Are you all right?" she asked. She hadn't wanted to come out sooner, because she knew it would mean being drawn into the argument, and she had a feeling anything she said, if asked to pick a side, would have just made it worse. And—just for clarification—Stephanie was not shy, she just didn't feel the need to voice aloud every little thing that popped into her head. If she did that, the babbling stream of consciousness would be endless.

"Oh, yes… I'm just tired of fighting with your sister," Irene answered wearily with a small smile, patting her younger stepdaughter's hand, looking worn out. She appreciated the concern. "Oh, how I wish Sarah could be more like you."

"Sarah is Sarah," Stephanie said, with a small shrug. "She's just at a difficult age. It's normal for teenagers to fight with their parents." Her friends did it all the time.

"You don't." Irene noted with appreciation.

"Who said I was normal?" Stephanie responded with a wry little smile.

Her stepmother smiled back, and some of the tension left her shoulders as she allowed herself to relax a little. Irene was glad Stephanie was so understanding and kind, just like Robert.

Sarah was in her room. It was the only safe place in the world. She made a point of going all around it each day, checking that everything was just where it had been and should be. Although her stepmother seldom came in there, except to deliver some ironed clothes or to give Sarah a message, she was not to be trusted. It would be typical of her to take it into her head to dust the room, even though Sarah made sure that it was kept clean, and then she would be bound to move things around and not put them back where they belonged. It was essential to ward off this disturbing spirit.

All the books had to remain in their proper positions, in alphabetical order by author and, within each author's group, in order of acquisition. Other shelves were filled with toys and dolls, and they were positioned according to affinities known only to Sarah. The curtains had to hang exactly so that, when Sarah was lying on her bed, they symmetrically framed the second poplar tree in a line that she could see from the window. The wastepaper basket stood so that its base just touched the edge of one particular block on the parquet floor. It would be unsafe if these things were not so. Once disorder was allowed to set in, the room would never be familiar again. People talked about how upsetting it was to be burgled, and Sarah knew just how it must feel, as though some uncaring stranger were fooling around with your most precious soul. The woman who came to clean three times a week knew that she was never to do anything to this room. Sarah looked after everything in there herself. She had learned how to fix electric plugs, and tighten screws, and hang pictures, so that her father should have no need to come in except to speak to her.

Sarah was now standing in the middle of her room. Her eyes were red. She sniffled, and chewed her lower lip. Then she walked over to her dressing table and gazed at a framed photograph. Her father and mother and her sister, aged nine, and herself, aged ten, gazed back at her. Her parents' smiles were confident. Stephanie wore a Mona Lisa smile and had a lively twinkle in her eyes. Sarah's own face in the photograph was, she thought, slightly over the top, grinning too keenly.

All around the room, other eyes watched. Photographs and posters displayed her mother in various costumes, for various parts. Clippings from _Variety_ were taped to the mirror of the dressing table, praising her mother's performances or announcing others she would give. On the wall beside the bed was pinned a poster advertising her latest play; in the picture, Sarah's mother and her costar, Jeremy, were cheek to cheek, their arms around each other, smiling confidently. The photographer had lit the pair beautifully, showing her to be so pretty, he so handsome, with his blond hair and a golden chain around his neck. Beneath the picture was a quote from one of the theater critics: "I have seldom felt such warmth irradiating an audience." The poster was signed, with large flourishing signatures: "For Darling Sarah, with all my love, Mom," and, in a different hand, "All Good Wishes, Sarah—Jeremy." Near the poster were more press clippings, from different newspapers, arranged in chronological order. In them, the two stars could be seen dining together in restaurants, drinking together at parties, and laughing together in a little rowboat. The texts were all on the theme of "Romancing on and off the stage."

Still sniffling from time to time, Sarah went to the small table beside her bed and picked up the music box her mother had given her for her fifteenth birthday. The memory of that gorgeous day was still vivid. Stephanie had proved she could still be considerate by making arrangements to be elsewhere so that Sarah could enjoy being showered with their mother and Jeremy's undivided attention for an entire day. A taxi had been sent for her in the morning, but instead of going to her mother's place it had taken her along the waterfront to where Jeremy and her mother were waiting in Jeremy's old black Mercedes. They went out into the country for lunch beside a swimming pool at some club where Jeremy was a member and the waiters spoke French, and later, in the pool, Jeremy had clowned around, pretending to drown, to such effect that an elderly man had rung the alarm bell. They had giggled in the car all the way back to town. At her mother's place, Sarah was given Jeremy's present, an evening gown in pale blue. She wore it to go with them to a new musical that evening, and afterward to supper, in a dimly lit restaurant. Jeremy was wickedly funny about every member of the cast they had seen in the musical. Sarah's mother had pretended to disapprove of his scandalous gossip, but that had only made Sarah and Jeremy laugh more uncontrollably, and soon all three of them had tears in their eyes. Jeremy had danced with Sarah, smiling down at her. He kidded her that a flashbulb meant that they'd be all over the gossip columns next morning, and all the way home he drove fast, to shake off the photographers, he claimed, grinning. Stephanie, who actually had been caught by photographers on occasion, claimed it was an annoying experience, but Sarah found the idea thrilling. As they said good night, her mother gave Sarah two parcels: a little one, wrapped in silver paper and tied with a pale blue bow, and slightly larger and flatter one, also wrapped in silver paper but tied with a white bow. Back in her room, Sarah had unwrapped them and found _The Labyrinth,_ with a small "Happy Birthday" card from her sister, and the music box, which was from her mother.

The tune of "Greensleeves" tinkled, and a little dancer in a pearly, silver gown twirled pirouettes. Sarah watched it reverently, until it became slow and jerky in motion. Then she put it down, and quietly recited from a poem she had studied in her English class:

"O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,  
How can we know the dancer from the dance?"

It was so easy to learn poetry by heart. She never had any difficulty in remembering those lines, whenever she opened the music box. In fact, she reflected, it's easier to remember them than to forget them. So why was she having such trouble in learning the speech from _The Labyrinth?_ It was only a game she was playing. No one was waiting for her to rehearse it, no audience, except Merlin, would judge her performance of it. It should have been a piece of cake. She frowned. How could she ever hope to go on the stage if she could not remember one speech?

She tried again. "Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Goblin City, to take back the child you have stolen…" She paused, her eyes on the poster of her mother in Jeremy's arms, and decided it would help her performance if she prepared for it. If you're going to get into a part, her mother had told her, you've got to have the right prop. Costume and makeup and wigs—they were more for the actor's benefit than the audience's. They helped you escape from your own life and _find your way into the part,_ as Jeremy said. And after each show, you take it all off, and you've wiped the slate clean. Every day was a fresh start. You could invent yourself again. Sarah took a lipstick from the drawer in her dressing table, put a little on her lips, and rolled them together, as her mother did. Her face close to the mirror, she applied a little more to the corners of her mouth.

There was a tapping on her door, and her father's voice came from outside. "Sarah? Can I talk to you?"

Still looking in the mirror, she replied, "There's nothing to talk about."

She waited. He would not come in unless she invited him. She imagined him standing there, frowning, rubbing his forehead, trying to think what he ought to say next, something firm enough to please that woman but amicable enough to reassure his daughter.

"You'd better hurry," Sarah said, "if you want to make the show."

"Toby's had his supper," her father's voice said, "and he's in bed now. If you could just make sure he goes to sleep all right, we'll be back around midnight."

Again, a pause, then the sound of footsteps walking away, with a slowness measured to express a blend of concern and resignation. He had done all that could be expected of him.

Sarah turned from the mirror and stared accusingly at the closed door. "You really wanted to talk to me, didn't you?" she murmured. "Practically broke down the door." Once upon a time, he would not have gone without giving her a kiss. She sniffled. Things had certainly changed in this house.

She put the lipstick in her pocket and wiped her lips with a tissue. As she went to throw it in the wastepaper basket, something caught her eye. More exactly, something that was not there caught her eye. Lancelot was not there.

Rapidly, she rummaged through her shelf of toys and dolls and cuddly things, dogs and monkeys and soldiers and clowns, though she knew it would be fruitless. If the teddy bear were there at all, he would have been in his appointed place. He had gone. The order of the room had been violated. Sarah's cheeks were hot. It could only have been her stepmother. Her father and Stephanie both knew better than to taint her sanctuary like this.

'Someone's been in my room,' she thought. 'I hate her.' Outside, the taxi was pulling away. Sarah heard it and ran to the window.

Stephanie, having just finished waving goodbye to their father and Irene from the porch, was startled when Sarah screamed, "I _hate_ you!" after them from above out of her bedroom window. But the only other one who heard her was Merlin, and he could do no more than he was doing already, which was to bark loudly, in the garage. Stephanie decided maybe she had better go see what was wrong, because she could feel another storm brewing.

Sarah knew where she would find Lancelot. Toby already had everything that his baby heart could desire, had so much more than she had ever had; yet more was given to him, every day, without question. She stormed into the nursery. The teddy bear was spread-eagled on the carpet, just tossed away, like that. Sarah picked Lancelot up and clutched him to her. Toby, full of warm milk, had been almost asleep in his crib. Sarah's entranced aroused him.

She glared at the baby. "I hate her. I hate you."

Toby started to cry. Sarah shuddered, and held Lancelot still more tightly.

"Oh," she wailed. "Oh, someone… save me. Take me away from this awful place."

Toby was howling now. His face was red. Sarah was wailing, Merlin was barking outside. Stephanie was thumping up the stairs in a hurry to see what was the matter. The storm delivered a lightning flash and clap of thunder directly above the house. It rattled the windows in their frames. Teacups danced in the kitchen cupboard.

"Someone save me," Sarah begged.

 _"Listen!" said a goblin, one eye opened._

 _All around him, on top of him, beneath him, the nest of goblins stirred sleepily. Another eye opened, and another, and another, all crazed eyes, red and staring. Some of the goblins had horns, and some had pointed teeth, some had fingers like claws; some were dressed in scraps of armor, a helmet, a gorget, but all of them had scaly feet, and all had baleful eyes. Higgledy-piggledy in a heap they slept, in their dirty chamber at the castle of the Goblin King. Their eyes went on opening, and their ears pricked up._

"All right, hush now, shush." Sarah was trying to calm herself down as much as her baby brother. "What do you want? Hmm? Do you want a story? All right." She said, feeling relieved when Stephanie popped into the room. At least she wasn't alone anymore. With barely a moment's thought, she picked up the thread of _The Labyrinth._ Since Toby and Sarah both appeared to be all right, aside from how upset they obviously were with each other, Stephanie waited and listened quietly to the story, hoping it would serve to calm her siblings. "Once upon a time there was a beautiful young woman whose stepmother always made her stay home with the baby. The baby was a spoiled child who wanted everything for himself, and the young woman was practically a slave girl. But what no one knew was this: the King of the Goblins had fallen in love with her, and had given her certain powers."

 _In the castle, the goblins' eyes opened very wide. They were all attention._

The lightning and thunder crashed again, but both Sarah and Toby had become quieter. "One night," Sarah continued, "when the baby had been particularly nasty, the girl called on the goblins to help her. And they said to her, 'Say your right words, and we'll take the baby away to the Goblin City, and then you'll be free.' Those were their words to her."

 _The goblins nodded enthusiastically._

For a reason she did not yet know, feelings of unease began to creep over Stephanie. But Toby was nearly asleep again, with only a light protest remaining on his breath. So, rather than interrupt the story and risk rousing him again, she said nothing. Sarah, enjoying her own invention, leaned closer to him, over the side of the crib. She was holding her audience in her spell. Lancelot was in her arms.

"But the girl knew," she went on, "that the King of the Goblins would keep the baby in his castle forever and ever, and he would turn the baby into a goblin. And so she suffered in silence, through many a long month… until one night, worn out by a day of slaving away at housework, and hurt beyond measure by the harsh, ungrateful words of her stepmother, she could bear it no longer."

By now, Sarah was leaning so close to Toby that she was whispering into his little pink ear. Suddenly he turned over in his crib and stared into her eyes, only a couple of inches away. There was a moment of silence. Stephanie held her breath. Then Toby opened his mouth, and began to howl loudly and insistently.

Stephanie closed her eyes. They had been so close to getting him to sleep. He must have been startled to find Sarah's face in his.

"Oh!" Sarah snorted in disgust, standing up straight again.

The thunder rolled, and Merlin gave it all he had. Sarah frowned, shrugged, and decided there was no way around it. She picked Toby up and walked around the room, jogging him in her arms, together with Lancelot. The small bedside light threw their shadows on the wall, huge and flickering. "All right," she said, "all right. Come on, now. Rock-a-bye baby, and all that stuff. Come on, Toby, knock it off."

Toby wasn't going to knock it off just for being jogged. He felt he had a serious grievance to express.

"Maybe I should—" Stephanie had begun to offer, feeling gentler tone might be required, but Sarah was not having that.

"I can do it," she snapped with a frown, annoyed that her younger sister thought she knew better, when she didn't even really live there anymore. "Toby," his elder sister said sternly, "be quiet, will you? Please? Or—" Her voice lowered. "—I'll… I'll say the words."

"Sarah…" Stephanie said, feeling unexplainably anxious.

Sarah ignored her and looked up quickly at the shadows on the wall and addressed them theatrically. "No! No! I mustn't. I mustn't. I mustn't say… 'I wish… I wish…'"

 _"Listen," said the goblin again._

 _Every glowing eye in the nest, every ear, was open now._

 _A second goblin spoke. "She's going to say it!"_

 _"Say what?" asked a stupid goblin._

 _"Shush!" The first goblin was straining to hear Sarah._

 _"Shut up!" other goblins said._

 _"_ You _shut up!" said the stupid goblin._

 _In the hubbub, the first goblin thought he would go crazy with trying to hear._ "Sh! Shhh!" _He put his hand over the mouth of the stupid goblin._

 _The second goblin shrieked,_ "QUIET!" _and thumped those nearest to him._

"Listen," _the first goblin admonished the rest. "She is going to say_ the words."

 _The rest of them managed to silence themselves. They listened intently to Sarah._

She was standing erect. Toby had reached such a crescendo of scream, red in the face, that he could scarcely draw breath. Stephanie became concerned he might hurt himself. His body was straining against Sarah's arms with the effort he was making. Lancelot had fallen to the floor again. Sarah closed her eyes and quivered. "I can bear it no longer," she exclaimed, and held the howling baby above her head, like a sacrificial offering. Stephanie's eyes widened as her sister started to intone:

"Goblin King!  
Goblin King!  
Wherever you may be,  
Come and take this child of mine  
Far away from me!"

Lightning cracked. Thunder crashed.

 _The goblins dropped their heads, crestfallen._

 _"That's not right," the first goblin said, witheringly._

 _"Where did she learn that rubbish?" the second scoffed. "It doesn't even start with_ 'I wish.'"

 _"Sh!" said a third goblin, seizing his chance to boss the others._

Sarah was still holding Toby above her head. Outraged by that, Toby was screaming even more loudly than before, which Sarah would not have thought possible. Yet, despite all this, Stephanie felt herself relax slightly and released a breath she hadn't realized that she had been holding. Though she couldn't say how or why she should feel so relieved. It was just a story, after all. She watched as Sarah brought Toby down and cuddled him, which had the effect of restoring him to his standard level of screaming.

Exhausted by now, Sarah told him, "Oh, Toby, stop it. You little monster. Why should I have to put up with this? You're not my responsibility. I ought to be free, to enjoy myself. _Stop it!_ Oh, I wish… I wish…" Anything would be preferable to this cauldron of noise, anger, guilt, and weariness in which she found herself. With a little tired sob, she said, "I wish I _did_ know what words to say to get the goblins to take you away."

 _"So where's the problem?" the first goblin said with an impatient sigh. Pedantically, he spelled it out. " 'I wish the goblins would come and take you away,_ right now.' _Hmm? That's not hard, is it?"_

In the nursery, Stephanie approached Sarah carefully. Her older sister was so frustrated, she was on the verge of tears. "Sarah, why don't you take a break? You look tired, and I bet you haven't eaten anything since you came home… Why don't you take a break?" she asked gently, holding her hands out in an offer to take Toby from her.

Sarah hesitated a moment, but decided to hand him over. She _was_ tired, and she _was_ hungry. She watched while Stephanie carefully adjusted her hold on their baby brother and began to hum a soft lullaby for him. Toby's torrent of screams calmed almost immediately.

Sarah knew that she should have been grateful or at least relieved, however, she couldn't help but feel slighted that, despite everything she had done for the howling baby, he seemed to like Stephanie more. It wasn't _fair._ He had to be doing this on purpose. Sarah began murmuring in a low voice. "I wish… I wish…"

 _The goblins were all alert again, biting their lips with the tension._

 _"Did she say it?" the stupid goblin asked brightly._

 _As one, the rest turned on him. "Shut," they said irritably, "up."_

Toby's tornado had blown itself out. He was breathing deeply, with a whimper at the end of his breath. His eyes were closed. Stephanie gently put him back in his crib and tucked him in. She and Sarah walked quietly to the door together and were shutting it behind them when he uttered an eerie shriek and started to scream again. He was hoarse now, and louder in consequence.

Stephanie let out a small groan. They had been _so_ close it almost hurt. Sarah froze, with her hand on the doorknob. "Aah," she moaned helplessly at the impossible baby. "I wish the goblins _would_ come and take you away…" She paused.

 _The goblins were so still, you could have heard a snail blink._

" _… right now,"_ Sarah said.

 _In the goblins' nest, there was an exhalation of pleasure._

 _"She_ said _it!"_

 _In a trice, all the goblins had vanished in different directions, save only the stupid goblin. He squatted there, a grin dawning on his face, until he realized that the rest had left him. "Hey," he said, "Wait for me," and he tried to run in several directions at once. Then he, too, vanished._

Lightning flashed and thunder hammered the air. Stephanie felt her stomach drop. Toby gave out a high-pitched screech, and Merlin barked as if all the burglars in the world were closing in.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2: What's Said Is Said**

* * *

The storm raged on over their house. The clouds boiled. Rain lashed the leaves on the trees. Thunder was followed by lightning.

Sarah and Stephanie were listening. What they were listening to was an unnatural silence within the room. Toby had stopped crying, so suddenly it scared them. The two sisters looked back inside the nursery. The bedside light was out. "Toby?" Sarah called. He did not respond.

Stephanie flicked the light switch beside the door. Nothing happened. Sarah took over and jiggled it up and down several times, to no effect. A board creaked. Stephanie tensed, filled with an eerie sense of apprehension. "Toby?" Sarah called again. "Are you all right? Why aren't you crying?"

Sarah and Stephanie stepped nervously into the quiet room. The light from the landing, coming through the doorway, threw unfamiliar shadows onto the walls and across the carpet. In the lull between two thunderclaps, they thought they could hear humming in the air. They could detect no movement at all in the crib.

"Toby," Stephanie whispered in anxiety, and the sisters walked toward the crib with their breath drawn. Sarah's hands were shaking like aspen leaves as she reached out to pull the sheet back.

Both sisters recoiled. The sheet was convulsing. Weird shapes were thrusting and bulging beneath it. They thought they glimpsed things poking out from the edge of the sheet, things that were no part of Toby. They felt their hearts thumping, and Sarah put her hand over her mouth, to stop herself from screaming.

Then the sheet was still again. It sank slowly down over the mattress. Nothing moved.

They could not turn and run away and leave him. They had to know. Whatever the horror of it, they had to know. Impulsively, both sisters reached out a hand to pull the sheet back.

The crib was empty.

For a moment or an hour, they would never know how long, they stared at the empty crib. Stephanie was horrified and confused. Sarah was not even frightened. Her mind had been wiped clean.

And then she was frightened, by a soft, rapid thumping on the windowpane. Stephanie jumped, startled. Sarah's hands clenched so tightly, her fingernails scored her skin.

A white owl was flapping insistently on the glass. They could see the light from the landing reflected in its great, round, dark eyes, watching them. The whiteness of its plumage was illuminated by a series of lightning flashes that seemed continuous. Behind them, a goblin briefly raised his head, and ducked down again. Another did likewise. The girls didn't see them. Their eyes were fixed on the owl's eyes. Something was not right, Stephanie could feel it. That thing was not a normal bird.

Lightning crackled and flashed again, and this time it distracted Stephanie's attention away from the window by shining on the clock that stood on the mantelpiece. She saw that the hands were at thirteen o'clock. She was staring distractedly at the clock when she felt something nudge the back of her legs. She glanced down. The crib was moving across the carpet on scaly legs like a lizard's, with talons for toes, one leg at each corner of the crib. Stephanie's lips parted, but she made no sound. She quickly tugged on Sarah's sleeve to get her attention. When her sister turned and saw the transformed crib, she let out a startled shriek.

Behind them, something snickered. The girls spun around and saw it duck down again behind the chest of drawers. Shadows were scuttling across the walls. Goblins were prancing and bobbing behind them. Sarah and Stephanie were watching the chest of drawers. Like the crib, it had a scaly, clawed foot at each corner, and it was dancing.

They wheeled around, mouths open, hands clenched, and saw the goblins cavorting. They ducked away into the shadows, to evade the girls' eyes. Stephanie looked for something that would serve as a weapon. In the corner of the nursery was an old broom. She took it and advanced upon the goblins. "Go away. Go away," Sarah whimpered, while her sister charged.

"Where's Toby? What happened to our brother?" Stephanie cried, trying to sweep them up, but the handle of the broom twisted in her hands and slithered out of her grasp.

The storm rose to a pitch. Lightning made daylight in the room, and scared faces suddenly began to vanish into cupboards, drawers, or down the cracks between floorboards. As the thunder boomed and the wind shook the curtains, a blast of air blew the window open. Between the fluttering curtains the white owl entered.

The girls wrapped their arms around their faces, and screamed. Sarah screamed again. She was petrified that the flapping owl would brush across her. She thought she would die if it did.

Stephanie felt the wind blowing her hair around, but the flapping had ceased. Between her fingers she peeked out, to see where the bird was perched. Sarah also lowered her arms to look, but they saw nothing. Perhaps it had flown out again. Stephanie suddenly had the feeling that someone was standing behind them.

A prolonged crackling of lightning was throwing a giant shadow on the wall facing the window. It was the shadow of a human figure.

Sarah and Stephanie spun around. Silhouetted against the stormy sky was a man. He wore a cloak, which glistened like beetle's wings and swirled in the wind. They could see that his hair was shoulder-length and blond. Something glinted about his neck. More than that they could not see in the dim light.

Sarah said, "Uh…," and cleared her throat. "Who are you?"

"Don't you know?" The man's voice was calm, almost kindly.

Lightning traced the veins of the sky and lit up his face. He was not smiling, as one might smile on greeting a stranger, nor was his expression fierce. His eyes were fixed upon Sarah's with an intensity that she found compelling and Stephanie found worrying. When he took a step toward Sarah, she did not retreat, and Stephanie remained at her sister's side. If his eyes had not hypnotized Sarah, the golden chain around his neck might have. A sickle-shaped hung ornament from it, upon his chest. Beneath the cloak, he was wearing a dark armored chest-plate over a fitted black shirt. He was shod in black boots, over black tights, and on his hands were black gloves. In one of them he held the jeweled nob of a curious cane with a fishtail shape at the end.

"I…," Sarah answered. "I…"

The humming that the girls though they had heard in the air was now quite distinct, and musical. The stranger smiled at Sarah's hesitancy. He was certainly handsome. She had not expected that. Stephanie thought he reminded her of Jeremy, in the way that they both shared a rather remarkable resemblance to David Bowie around the face. But with that teased coif and elaborate makeup, he looked like he should be singing lead for a hair band, though she had to give him credit; he was probably the first man she had ever seen who could wear as much makeup as a 5th avenue hooker and still manage to look devastatingly handsome. He was terrifying and beautiful all at once. Like Tim Curry in _The Rocky Horror Picture Show._

"The long-lost member of Twisted Sisters?" Stephanie ventured, defaulting to her number one defense mechanism for when she was nervous, sarcasm. She instantly regretted opening her mouth. The stranger tore his eyes away from Sarah and narrowed them at her in a sharp glare. He clearly did not appreciate Stephanie's wicked sense of humor.

Sarah finally spoke up, her voice a whisper. "You're… him, aren't you? You're the King of the Goblins."

He turned his attention back to Sarah and bowed. "Jareth."

The two sisters resisted the ridiculous impulse to return a curtsy.

"I have saved you," he said. "I have liberated you from those bonds that distressed you and frightened you. You're free now, Sarah."

"Free?" Stephanie asked, with a frown. So Toby really did disappear because of Sarah's wish? This was so messed up.

"Oh, no. I don't want to be free," Sarah answered. "I mean, I do, but—I want my little brother back. Please." She gave him a tiny smile. "If it's all the same to you."

Jareth folded his hands on the top of his cane. "What's said is said."

"But I didn't mean it," Sarah replied quickly.

"Didn't you, now?"

"We didn't think you were actually listening," Stephanie felt compelled to point out.

"Silence," Jareth commanded with a wave of his hand, "this has nothing to do you with you."

Stephanie was opening her mouth to tell him that it had everything to do with her, because Toby was her brother too, but she felt her throat tighten slightly, and no sound came out when moved her lips. Her eyes widened, and she shot the Goblin King an incredulous look when she realized that he had somehow taken away her voice.

"Oh, please. Where is he?" Sarah asked anxiously, oblivious to her sister's plight.

Jareth chuckled. "You know very well where he is."

"Please bring him back, please." She heard herself speaking in a small voice. "Please!"

"Sarah…" Jareth frowned, and shook his head. His expression was all concern for her. "Go back to your room. Read your books. Put on your costumes. Forget about the baby."

"No, I can't."

Stephanie watched in silence as, for a moment, they regarded each other, adversaries trying to size each other up at the outset of a long contest. Thunder rumbled.

Then Jareth raised his left arm, and made a large gesture with his hand. Sarah and Stephanie looked around, thinking he was summoning assistance. When they faced him again, a glowing crystal had appeared in his hand.

"I've brought you a gift, Sarah," he said, holding it out to her.

Stephanie's frown deepened. Sarah paused. They could not trust him. "What is it?" Sarah asked, voicing the question her sister could not.

"A crystal, nothing more. Except that if you look into it… it will show you your dreams."

Stephanie didn't much see the point in that. You could see your dreams any time you wanted, all you needed was your imagination. And what good was it in just looking at your dreams, when you could work to make them come true in real life? Wasn't it more fun to live them? 'Besides,' she thought, 'coming from a shady guy like this, there must be a catch.'

She became concerned when Sarah's lips parted involuntarily, entranced. Jareth watched her face, while he spun the shining crystal around in his fingers. Sarah's hand started to reach out for it. He smiled a little more, and withdrew the crystal from her.

Raising the cane in his other hand, he told her, "But this is not a gift for an ordinary girl, one who takes care of a screaming baby." His voice was quieter now, and huskier. "Do you want it, Sarah?" He held it out toward her again.

This time Sarah's hands remained by her sides, and she made no answer. Her eyes were fixed on the dancing, flashing glints of the crystal. To see her own dreams—what wouldn't she give for that?

"Then forget the child," Jareth said firmly.

While Sarah hesitated, another bolt of lightning illuminated the sky behind the Goblin King.

She was torn. The gift was not only seductive, it was also the choice of someone who understood her, someone who cared about the secret places of her imagination and knew how infinitely much more they meant to her than anything else. In return, she would have to trade her responsibility for an offensively spoiled child, who made endless demands upon her and never showed the least sign of gratitude; who was, after all, only her half brother. The crystal was spinning, glowing. And then she felt Stephanie tug, once, on her sleeve.

Sarah willed her eyes to close. From behind shut eyelids, she heard a voice answering. It was her own voice, but it seemed to be a memory. "I—I can't. It isn't that I don't appreciate what you're trying to do for me… but I want my baby brother back. He must be so scared…" She opened her eyes again.

Jareth snorted, and tossed his mane of blond hair. He had lost patience with the girl. With a wave of his hand, he extinguished the crystal. With another wave, he plucked a live snake from the air. He held it with a straight arm in front of him, so that it writhed and hissed near Sarah's face. Then he threw it at her. "Don't defy me," he warned her.

It was wrapped around her neck. She clutched desperately at the thing, and Stephanie quickly helped her pull it off. The writhing snake turned into a scarf in their hands. Sarah yelled when it growled, and they dropped it and jumped away when it started to squirm. When it hit the floor it shattered into a number of horribly ugly little goblins, who scuttled, snickering, to the corners of the room. Other goblins crept from the shadows, or popped out from their hiding places, and stood all around the room, brazen now, watching to see what their king would do to them next.

"You are no match for me, Sarah. Not even with your sister's help." Jareth sounded impatient. "Let the child alone. Take my gift. I will not offer it to you again."

Before he could produce the crystal, Sarah told him, "No." She paused. "Thank you all the same, but I can't do what you want. Can't you see that? I must have my brother back."

"You will never find him."

Stephanie's eyes shined upon hearing that.

"Ah," Sarah said, and took a deep breath, before saying exactly what her sister was thinking. "Then… there _is_ a place to look."

Just for a moment, Jareth's face flinched. Sarah and Stephanie saw it, the merest trace of fear fleeting across his eyes. Was it possible? His nostrils tightened, he gripped his cane, and appeared to hesitate slightly before answering her. They could not quite believe it, but the suspicion that the Goblin King could be afraid of one of them, even if only momentarily, was encouraging.

"Yes," he said. "There is a place."

And now, with a really hammy gesture straight out of vaudeville, he twirled his hand and pointed through the window.

"There!"

'Lightning and thunder, right on cue,' the sisters thought. They moved past him and stared into the night. On a distant hill, brilliant in the flashes, they saw a castle. Sarah and Stephanie leaned on the windowsill, trying to see more clearly. There were towers with turrets, massive walls, spires and domes, a portcullis and a drawbridge. The whole edifice was built on top of a sharply rising mound. Around it the lightning flickered and forked like snakes' tongues. Beyond was blackness.

From just behind Sarah's shoulder, Jareth murmured, "Do you still want to look for him?"

"Yes." Sarah swallowed. Stephanie took her sister's hand, holding it, and nodded in agreement. "Is that… the castle beyond the Goblin City?"

Jareth did not answer at once, and they turned around. He was still there, watching them intensely, but they were no longer in the house. They stood facing each other on a windswept hilltop. Between them and the hill on which the castle stood was a broad valley. In the darkness the girls could not tell what was down there. They became aware that a hint of light was staining the rim of the dark sky. They watched the light glow brighter, changing from red to pink. Jareth's castle was shining before them, its spires and turrets rimmed with the reflected sunlight. Anxiously they scrutinized the valley, which, like a developing photograph, took longer to reveal itself.

The first thing they could gauge was its width. The extent of the land between them and the castle was not so very great. But, from the foot of the hillside where they stood, to the castle beyond it, and from horizon to horizon on each side, there stretched a vast, intricate maze of walls and hedges.

Stephanie's eyes widened. She studied it, trying to decipher some pattern to it, some principle of design that might guide them through it. She could see none. Corridors doubled, and wound and coiled. Gateways led to gateways leading into gateways. It reminded her of thousands of fingerprints laid side by side, overlapping each other. 'Did someone work all that out,' she wondered, 'or had it just happened?' Regardless, they had no choice but to challenge the impossible labyrinth if they wanted to save Toby.

Stephanie turned again and Sarah followed. The wind blew Stephanie's hair over her face. Brushing it back, she steeled her nerves and took one small step forward.

Jareth's voice came from behind them. "Turn back, Sarah. Turn back before it is too late."

"I can't. Oh, I can't. Don't you understand that?" Sarah shook her head slowly, gazing at the distant castle, and to herself, quietly, repeated, "I can't."

"What a pity." Jareth's voice was low, and gentle, as though he really meant it.

"It doesn't look that far," she said, and heard in her voice the effort she was making to sound brave.

Jareth was at her elbow now. He looked at her and her sister with a smile that was icy. Stephanie squared her shoulders and met his chilling expression with fire in her eyes. "It's farther than you think." Pointing at a tree, he added, "And the time is shorter."

Sarah and Stephanie saw that an antique wooden clock had appeared in the tree, as though growing from a branch. On it were marked the hours to thirteen, as on the nursery clock in the lightning.

"I've never had two runners at once before, but since your sister is so keen to follow you, I suppose I will allow it, this time." Jareth told Sarah. "But remember, if you start together, you must finish together. You have thirteen hours to unriddle the Labyrinth, before your baby brother becomes one of us."

"Us?"

Jareth nodded. "Forever."

Magic still hummed in the air. Sarah and Stephanie were standing still, hair tossing in the wind, looking out across the Labyrinth toward the castle. Sarah glanced at her younger sister. Stephanie stood resolutely at her side. There was no way she was letting her sister do this alone. After a while, Sarah said, "Tell us where we start."

They waited for an answer, and finally they heard him say, "Such a pity."

"What?" They turned their heads to look up at him, but he was not there. The two girls spun all around. He had vanished. They were alone on the windswept hilltop.

They looked across again at the castle. They thought they glimpsed the figure of an owl, high above, wings spread wide on the air, as he flew steadily away from them. Sarah clenched her fists, set her jaw, and cleared her throat. "The Labyrinth," she said. "It doesn't look that hard."

Stephanie would beg to differ, but she took another step forward anyway, down the hillside.

"Well," Sarah said, moving to follow her, "here we go. Come on, feet."


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3: Pipsqueak**

* * *

In the dawning light, Sarah and Stephanie could see below them a path that zigzagged down the hillside. They picked their way to it through the rocks and shrubs. At the foot of the path, they came to a great wall, strengthened with buttresses. It stretched as far as they could see to the left and right.

Doubtfully, the sisters approached the wall, with no idea what they might do when they reached it. As they got closer, a movement just at the base if it caught their eyes. There was a little man. He was taking a wiz in the small pond he was standing in front of. Lovely. Stephanie's face deadpanned, while Sarah wrinkled her nose slightly in disgust.

"Excuse me," Sarah said tentatively.

The little man nearly jumped out of his skin.

"Oh, excuse me," he said, before he had even seen who it was, zipping up his fly in a hurry.

When he did turn, he had his face down so that he regarded them from under his thick, bushy eyebrows.

"Well!" he exclaimed, looking cross and astonished at the same time. "Well!" It seemed he had never before set eyes on people like Sarah and Stephanie. Or perhaps it was that no one like them had ever caught him unawares. Or perhaps it was because there were two of them this time. "Well!" he said again.

'We'll never get anywhere like this,' Stephanie thought.

He was an odd little person. His sprouting eyebrows clearly wanted to be fierce, but his wrinkled face couldn't live up to that ferocity. His expression was wary now, not particularly friendly, but not hostile either. He seemed to be avoiding their eyes, and the girls noticed that whenever they moved their hands his gaze would follow them. On top of his head he wore a skullcap. From the belt that held his breeches up, he had a chain of ornaments dangling, costume jewelry as far as they could tell. Sarah saw his mouth moving to say "Well!" again and interrupted quickly.

"Excuse me, but we have to go through the Labyrinth. Can you show us the way in?"

His mouth frozen in the formation of a W, he blinked at her once or twice. Then his eyes darted to one side. He rushed a few steps toward a bluebell, at the same time pulling a spray can from under his jacket. As he aimed the spray, Sarah and Stephanie saw that a diaphanous little fairy was emerging from the bluebell.

He sprayed it, with a couple of quick bursts. The fairy at once wilted, like a shriveling petal.

"Fifty-seven," he said with some satisfaction.

Stephanie frowned. Sarah was shocked. "Oh, how _could_ you?"

He answered with a grunt.

Sarah ran to where the fairy was lying on the ground, wings quivering and shriveling. Stephanie followed at a more careful pace. "Poor thing!" Sarah exclaimed. She picked it up gently in her fingertips and turned accusingly the fairy-slayer. "You monster."

She felt a sharp pain, as from broken glass. The fairy had bitten her finger.

"Oh!" Sarah dropped the fairy and stuck her finger in her mouth. Stephanie gave her sister a curious look. "It _bit_ me," Sarah muttered around her finger.

" 'Course she did," the little man chuckled. "What do you expect fairies to do?"

"I…" Sarah was frowning, perplexed. "I thought they did—well, nice things. Like granting wishes."

Stephanie cocked an eyebrow at that. 'Really, Sarah?' she thought. Her sister had been watching too many Disney movies (not that Stephanie believed there was such a thing). Actually, fairies were known for being very mischievous and temperamental. In the old folklore and unsanitized fairy tales that Stephanie had read, fairies often did more harm than good, and were famous for playing nasty tricks on the humans who offended them, and even some who hadn't.

"Ha!" The little man's eyebrows went up, and he chortled. "Shows what you know then, don't it?" He raised his spray can and casually hit another bluebell with it. A second shimmering fairy fell down, turning brown like a leaf in autumn. "Fifty-eight," he said, and shook his head. "They breed as fast as I spray."

Sarah was still wincing as she sucked her finger. "Ooh," she complained. "It hurts." She took her finger from her mouth and shook it. Stephanie reached into her pocket for a Band-Aid. She always carried a few out of habit, since fencing could be rough, even with protective gear.

The little man walked to a plant nearly as tall as he was, tore off one of its broad, grayish leaves, and handed to Sarah. "Here," he told her. "Rub that on it."

Sarah gratefully did what he told her. No sooner had she started rubbing than she dropped the leaf, clasped her finger with the other hand and hopped around in pain. "Ow!" she shouted. "That makes it worse. Much worse. OWWW!"

Stephanie shot the little man a harsh look of disapproval.

He was holding his sides with his pudgy little hands and roaring with laughter, " 'Course it do. Fancy rubbing one of _them_ on a fairy bite. You don't know nothing, do you?"

Her face screwed up with pain, Sarah answered indignantly, "I thought you were giving it to me to make it better. Oh! Ooh!"

"You thought that too, did you? You've got a lot of opinions." He chuckled. "All of them wrong."

In spite of the pain in her finger, Sarah let Stephanie wrap the Band-Aid snuggly around the small wound. The girls realized he was paying them back for having caught him unawares. "You're horrible," Sarah told him.

"No, I'm not." He sounded surprised. "I'm Hoggle. Who are you?"

"Sarah."

He nodded. "That's what I thought." Spotting another fairy, he squirted her. To make sure, he stepped on this one and ground his foot around. The fairy squealed. Stephanie winced slightly at the sound. "Fifty-nine," Hoggle said.

Stephanie was thinking as she watched him. He seemed to know about her sister. So he must have something to do with Jareth, right? Some kind of spy, maybe? Well, maybe. Yet he was not her idea of a spy. This guy was no James Bond. Spies weren't grumpy. They didn't play mean tricks on you, did they? Weren't they supposed to try to gain your trust first? But if making assumptions was what kept getting them into trouble, then maybe this one was wrong, too. 'But in that case,' she thought, 'supposing he is a spy, then it might be his job to persuade us that all our opinions are wrong when really they are all correct. And if they are correct, then he is not a spy. But that would mean he had not motive for persuading us that we're wrong about everything—unless, we really are, and he's just the type of person who loves to point out others' errors—so I could be wrong about this, too, and so… supposing he is a spy…'

Her already derailing train of thought was completely thrown off the tracks when Sarah spoke. "Aren't you going to introduce yourself, Stephanie?"

Stephanie blinked. Well, first of all, she couldn't. And second, why bother when she had just said her name for her?"

Sensing Jareth's magic on her, Hoggle said knowingly, "Well, she can't, can she?" He smirked. "She's been enchanted."

"What? Really?" Sarah said, with wide eyes, taken aback.

Stephanie nodded. 'More like cursed,' she thought. It was one thing to remain quiet simply because she felt like it, but she found that having the freedom of choice forcibly taken away from her was not only unpleasant, but rather inconvenient.

"When did that happen?" Sarah asked.

Stephanie stared at her.

"Oh, right… You can't answer that, can you?"

Stephanie shook her head.

Hoggle chortled again, amused at their expense.

'Well,' Stephanie thought, glumly, 'there's nothing else to do. Whether or not he is here to spy on us, he is the only person we can ask for help.' So she gestured for Sarah to try talking to him.

Catching on, Sarah asked, "Do you know where the door to the Labyrinth is?"

Hoggle screwed up his face. "Maybe."

"All right, where is it?"

Instead of replying, he dodged to one side, raising his spray can. "Sixty."

"I said, where is it?"

"Where is what?"

"The door."

"What door?"

"The door into the Labyrinth."

"The door! Into the Labyrinth! Oh, that's a good one." He laughed, not kindly.

Sarah wanted to punch him, and Stephanie wondered if a swift kick to the rear might help jog his memory. "It's hopeless asking you anything."

"Not if you asks the right questions." He was giving them a sidelong look. "You're green as a couple of cucumbers."

"Well, what _are_ the right questions?"

Hoggle stroked the top of his nose. "It depends on what you want to know."

"How do we get into the Labyrinth?"

Hoggle sniffed, and his eyes twinkled. "Ah! Now _that's_ more like it."

The girls thought they heard that music in the air again, the magic music that had hummed around the Goblin King.

"You gets in there." He nodded, indicating behind them. "You got to ask the right questions if you want to get anywhere in the Labyrinth."

Sarah and Stephanie had spun around. Now, in the great wall, they saw a huge, grotesquely designed gate. The two sisters stared at it most accusingly. They could have sworn it had not been there before.

"There ain't no _door_ , see?" Hoggle was explaining. "All you got to do now is find the key."

The girls looked back at him and then all around them. They saw at once that it was going to be no problem to find the key. Near them was a very small mat, and from each end of it and enormous key was sticking out. "Well," Sarah said, "That's simple enough."

The two sisters went over to the key and tried to pick it up. They could each just manage to get one end of it off the ground, but the whole key was too heavy even for the two of them together to lift up to the keyhole in the gate. Sarah glared at Hoggle.

"I suppose it's too much to expect you to give us a hand?"

"Yes," Hoggle said.

Stephanie rolled her eyes. She supposed they should have known it wouldn't be that easy. The girls tried again, straining to lift it. It was hopeless.

"Oh," Sarah said. "This is so _stupid._ "

"You mean _you're_ so stupid," Hoggle corrected her.

"Shut up, you rotten little pipsqueak."

"Don't you call me that!" Hoggle was agitated. "I am not a pipsqueak."

"Yes, you are," Sarah said. She was uneasily reminded of herself at a much younger age, at school, chanting cruel jibes at some tormented girl, but she persisted. "Yes, you _a-are_. Rotten little nasty ugly pipsqueak!"

Hoggle was beside himself with rage. "Don't call me that," he said hysterically. " _You!_ Ha! You're so stupid you are, you take everything for granted."

"Pipsqueak! Pipsqueak!"

"I'm not. I'm not. Stop it! Stop it!"

"Nasty, creepy little pipsqueak!"

While those two were busy slinging playground-level insults back and forth at each other, Stephanie had decided to try a different tactic. She thought for a moment, and considered how nothing had been quite as it seemed so far. Then she went to the gate and gave it a little push. It swung open.

That stopped Sarah and Hoggle short.

"See," he said, "if you weren't so brainless, you might've thought of that. Nobody said it was locked."

"Very clever." Sarah retorted sourly.

"You think _you're_ so clever," Hoggle said. "You know why? Because you ain't learned nothing."

Sarah ignored him. She and Stephanie were peering cautiously inside the gate. They did not like what they saw. It was dark and forbidding in there. The music humming in the air seemed to be more intense. There was a smell of things rotting.

They gathered their courage and took two steps into the Labyrinth. Then they stopped short. A passageway ran across the entrance. It was so narrow, and the wall was so high, that the sky was a mere slit over their heads. In the gloom, they heard a continual drip of water, echoing. Sarah approached the farther wall, touched it, and pulled her hand away. As Stephanie had suspected, it was dank and slimy, like mildew. She was glad she hadn't tried to touch it.

Hoggle's head was poking through the gateway behind them. "Cozy, ain't it?"

Sarah shuddered.

Hoggle's manner had altered. He was quiet, and it was almost possible to detect a hint of concern in his voice. "You really going to go in there, are you?"

Sarah hesitated. She shared a glance with Stephanie, who gave her a reassuring nod. "I… yes," she said. "Yes, we are. Do you… is there any reason why we shouldn't?" She was clenching her fists. Stephanie was nervous, too, to be honest. It did seem such a dreadfully gloomy place, inside the gate.

"There's every reason why you shouldn't," Hoggle replied. "Is there any reason why you should? Any really good reason?"

"Yes, there is." Sarah paused. "So I suppose… we must."

"All right," Hoggle said, in a tone of voice that implied, on your own head be it. "Now," he asked, "Which way will you go? Right or left?"

The girls looked one way and then the other. There was no reason to choose either one or the other. Both looked grim. The brick walls appeared to extend to infinity. Stephanie was open to suggestions. Sarah shrugged, wanting some help, but too proud to ask for it. "They both look the same," she said.

"Well, Hoggle told her, "You're not going to get very far, then, are you?"

"All right," she said crossly, "Which way would you go?"

"Me?" He laughed without mirth. "I wouldn't go neither way."

"Some guide you are." Sarah huffed.

'Isn't he just pest control?' Stephanie thought.

"I never said I was a guide, did I?" Hoggle pointed out. "Although you could certainly use one. You'll probably end up back where you started, given your record for being wrong."

"Well," Sarah snapped at him, "if that's all the help you're going to be, you might as well let us get on with it!"

"You know your problem?" Hoggle asked.

Sarah took no notice, but tried to look determined to set out in one direction or the other. Left, right, she was thinking, that was the normal order. So in this abnormal place, she might as well try going to the right, mightn't she?

"I told you, you take too many things for granted," Hoggle went on. "This Labyrinth, for instance. Even if you get to the center, which is extremely doubtful, you'll never get out again."

Stephanie shrugged. They could worry about that once they had Toby back. Looking at the wall directly across from the gate, she wondered if, somehow, left or right were not the only options open to them. She reached out to search it for something that might feel like a hidden door, but before she could touch it, Sarah grabbed her hand and told Hoggle, "That's your opinion." Sarah led Stephanie to move to their right.

"Well, it's a better opinion than any of yours." He retorted, noticing how close the smaller of the two sisters had come to finding the first opening.

"Thanks for nothing, Hogwart."

 _"Hoggle!"_ His voice came echoing from the gateway, where he remained. "And don't say I didn't warn you."

Her jaw set, Sarah strode out, pulling her sister along with her between the damp and dire walls.

The girls had gone only a few strides when, with a mighty, reverberating _clang_ , the gate closed behind them. They stopped, and could not resist looking back to see if the gate would open again. It didn't.

Hoggle was shut outside. The only sounds in the Labyrinth now were the drip of water, and Sarah and Stephanie's quick breathing.

The two sisters each took a deep breath and set off along the passageway again. Since Sarah now seemed determined to take the lead, and neither of them really knew what they were doing, Stephanie decided to let her. A clump of lichen on the wall opened its eyes and watched them go. The eyes, on tendrils, had an anxious look, and when the girls had gone some distance away the clump, swiveling its eyes toward each other, commenced to gossip among itself. Most of it disapproved of the direction they had taken. You could tell that from the way the eyes looked meaningfully into each other. Lichen knows about directions.

When they had been walking for a while between the towering walls of the apparently endless passageway and gotten nowhere that looked different, they went on walking for a while more, and it was all the same. Sarah was beginning to lose her patience. The silence and aimless wandering was getting to her.

"Is this what a labyrinth is?" she said aloud, for the company of hearing her own voice. "There's no single turn, or corner, or—anything. It just goes on, and on. This is your fault, you know," she shot at Stephanie, feeling cross.

'Oh, so now it's my fault?' Stephanie thought, dubious, with a frown.

"None of this ever would have happened of you hadn't given me that book."

'Well, how was I supposed to know the characters in it were real? Besides, you didn't have to make that wish.'

Sarah wasn't done. She knew blaming Stephanie wouldn't solve anything, but it was like something within her had been uncorked, and all of her accumulated stress came pouring out along with the envy and resentment she had been trying so hard to keep bottled up inside. "You know, you're always ruining everything and making me look bad. Ever since we were young. Did you know most people used to think you were the older sister, even though you've always been so much shorter than me? It's not fair. And you got to go with mom. How come you get to have a perfect life? Why do you get to live glamorously, and I don't? It's not _fair._ You don't even like acting _._ It's such a waste! What's so great about fencing? It's not even a real sport. All you do is wave fake sword around. It's not fair that you can get Dad, and even Jeremy to clear their schedules for one of your matches, when they can't ever find time for anything I want to do." Sarah carried on like this for quite awhile, unaware of the emotional toll her angry monologue was taking on her sister.

Stephanie was well aware that what had happened to them was "not fair". There was no such thing as _fair_. Expecting life to be fair to you because you are a good person was like expecting a bull not to charge at you because you are a vegetarian. Stephanie did _not_ have a perfect life. It wasn't glamorous. For three years after the divorce, Stephanie had battled depression. She had made her parents and everyone else who knew promise not to tell Sarah, because she had wanted to protect her from it. Having to tell the two people she loved who had brought her into this world that she wanted out had been bad enough. Only eleven months had passed since she was able to prove that she was stable enough to stop taking her medicine every day. It was hard, and it took a lot of work, and it got worse before it got better—but she made it through. Stephanie was a survivor, and she would never forget that. But words still hurt, especially when said by the right person.

After the eighth "It's not _fair,"_ that was it. Stephanie decided she'd had enough. She quickly pulled out the small memo pad she always kept in her back pocket and undid her grape-scented pen-bracelet to write the response: "Sarah, not everything is about you. One more word, and I'll slap you." She grabbed her older sister by the shoulder, spun her around, and held the finished note straight out in front of her for Sarah to read.

When Sarah read the note and saw the expression on her sister's face, she was stunned into silence. She had never thought in a million years that Stephanie would dare threaten her like that, but it was obvious from the sharp look in her eyes that she meant business. Sarah shut her mouth, feeling ashamed. Behind the steely glint in Stephanie's dark eyes, she had caught a small glimpse of the pain that she had hidden so well these last four years. Though she could have no idea just how deeply it ran, Sarah did feel guilty for hurting her. She shouldn't have taken her frustration out on someone who was only trying to help.

Walking along behind Stephanie in silence, watching her square her shoulders and put on a brave face, Sarah began to realize just how much she had been taking her sister for granted. 'Maybe… that's not the only thing I'm taking for granted,' Sarah thought, coming to another realization. Maybe the Labyrinth did not go on and on. Maybe she was just taking it for granted that it did, because that was all that it had done so far. Sarah had an idea, but, first, she had to do something very important.

"… Stephanie?"

Stephanie stopped but did not look back at her. Sarah swallowed nervously and took several steps to close the gap between them, taking one of her sister's hands to hold in her own.

"I'm sorry." Sarah apologized, and she truly meant it. Seeing this, Stephanie looked down at her feet for a moment, then raised her head with a small, but genuine, smile on her face.

She forgave her.

Sarah smiled. "Come on, let's try running for awhile."


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4: Which Is Which**

* * *

Taking another deep breath, Sarah and Stephanie began to run. The only difference now was that the walls revealed their endlessness more quickly. They ran faster, skidding in mud, banging against the brick sides of the passage, faster and faster, and the walls stretched out ahead of them without turning or feature or end, until the walls began to spin above their heads, and the girls realized that they were collapsing, exhausted, with sweat running down their faces.

They lay together in a heap, gasping for air. Sarah knew she probably would have been sobbing if Stephanie hadn't been with her. A clump of lichen nearby stared down at the girls sympathetically, its eyes boggling.

When the girls recovered, they opened their eyes very slowly, hoping they would see something different this time: a corner, a door, anything but more of the same. All there was to see were the two walls.

With a yelp of frustration, Sarah beat her fists upon one of the walls.

As though answering a doorbell, a tiny wormlike creature with large eyes popped its head out from between the bricks where Sarah had pounded. " 'Allo?" it asked in a cheery voice.

Woebegone, Sarah and Stephanie both looked at the worm.

"Did you just say, 'hello'?" Sarah asked.

"No, I said ' 'Allo,'" it answered, "but that's close enough."

Upon realizing it really had spoken to them, the two sisters exchanged a glance. A talking worm, they reflected; yes, they should never have taken it for granted that a worm can't talk. Stephanie thought it was actually strangely cute, especially in that little scarf it was wearing. It reminded her of the caterpillar from _Alice in Wonderland_ , but without the bad smoking habit. The two sisters exchanged a look and shrugged. If a worm could talk, perhaps it could give them some advice. In a low voice, Sarah asked it, "Do you know how to get through the Labyrinth?"

"Who, _me?"_ It grinned. "No, I'm just a worm."

Sarah and Stephanie nodded. They might have expected as much.

"Come inside and meet the missus," the worm invited them.

Stephanie found the idea amusing. Two worms playing house? She would have liked to see that, if they weren't so pressed for time.

Sarah managed a faint smile. "Thank you," she told the worm, "but we've got to get through the Labyrinth. And there are no turnings, or openings, or anything." She blinked away hot tears. "It just goes on and on." Stephanie placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.

"Ooh," the worm said, "you ain't looking right, you ain't. It's full of openings. It's just that you ain't seeing 'em, that's all."

Stephanie furrowed her brow slightly in confusion and looked around again. Sarah gazed around in disbelief. The walls stretched away forever on either side.

There was no logic to it. Or maybe there was nothing but logic, and that was the trouble: all logic and no reason.

"There's an opening just across there," the worm went on. "It's right in front of you."

They looked. Brick wall, damp mildew, clump of lichen, nothing else. "No, there isn't."

The worm sniffed, and in a kind voice said, "Come in and have a nice cup of tea."

"There isn't an opening." Sarah's voice was insistent. But, at this point, Stephanie was willing to try anything.

"You try walking that way, over there," the worm said, with a nod of encouragement. "You'll see. But first, why not have a nice cup of tea?"

"Where?" Sarah looked at the blank wall again. Stephanie stood up and brushed herself off.

"I got the kettle on."

Stephanie appreciated the offer, but the worm's hospitality was wasted on them. "That's just _wall,_ " Sarah muttered. "There's no way through."

"Ooh," the worm observed, "this place, oh dear. Things aren't always what they seem, you know, not here. Not here, no. So don't you take anything for granted."

As he was saying this, Stephanie approached the wall and began to exam it more closely. Sarah gave the worm a sharp glance. How was it that he had the same script as Hoggle? And in her mind she heard Hoggle's voice again. "Me? I wouldn't go neither way."

Neither way. Right in front of you. What else was there to do? She would try it. Sarah looked up and saw that Stephanie was way ahead of her, already very tentatively and flinching in anticipation, walking into the wall, and through into another passage way.

Stephanie beamed back at her sister. There was a way through! The appearance of a solid wall was only an optical illusion.

Sarah was delighted. This passageway, too, stretched out infinitely to either side, but it was at least a different one. The sisters turned back gratefully. "Thank you," Sarah said to the worm, while Stephanie smiled brightly. "That was incredibly helpful."

They had begun to walk along the new passageway when they heard a little shout behind them. "And don't go that way!" the worm was calling. He looked up at the lichen, whose eyes were worried as they watched the sisters. The worm gave the lichen a cheerful grin, but the lichen just went on boggling anxiously after the girls.

Sarah and Stephanie halted, and then came back, with Sarah panting. "What did you say?"

"What I said," the worm told her, "was, don't go that way."

"Oh," Sarah nodded. "Thanks." She immediately set off in the other direction. Stephanie was tempted to ask "why," but seeing as she couldn't, she simply shrugged, nodded at the worm, and hurried off after her sister.

The lichen watched them go again, and sighed with relief.

"Whew." The worm rolled his eyes. "That was close. If they'd gone that way, they'd have walked straight into that dreadful castle."

In the stone chamber of the Goblin King, Toby, still in his red-and-white-striped pajamas, had his mouth wide open and was howling. His little fists were clenched tight, his face was scarlet, his eyes were shut, and he was putting out a din that would have made Sarah groan aloud and Stephanie sigh internally.

Jareth watched him with an amused smile. In that place no one else took much notice of Toby. Horned or hairy or helmeted goblins racketed around the place, across the filthy floor, over the steps of the throne, up on the ledges of the room, some chasing chickens or a black pig in a helmet, some squabbling over a tidbit, some peering into any vessel in the hope of finding something to eat, some just sitting and gnawing on bones, others staring balefully at all the rest through crazed eyes. The place was littered with half-finished platefuls of food, rotting bits of meat and vegetable matter, garbage and junk. A small pterodactyl flapped around, taking its chances. The curved crown mounted heraldically above the throne, decorated with ram's horns, had been appropriated by a vulture for its nest. Or perhaps Jareth had installed the vulture there for his own amusement.

He needed something to keep him amused here. The goblins were, frankly, a bore. They were so stupid they couldn't find their own way through the labyrinth. They were without wisdom or wit. In the old days, when many babies had been offered to him, Jareth had been more tolerant, reckoning that soon he would certainly find one who could be trained as a worthy companion to the throne, one whose young blood would serve to refresh Jareth's, whose high spirits would dispel the thoughts of aging that oppressed the King of the Goblins. As calls upon him to steal a child became rarer, so Jareth sank deeper into dejection. He avoided mirrors and reflecting water. He could feel that the corners of his mouth had tightened, and he needed no proof of the wrinkles that creased his brow when he did not deliberately narrow his eyes to tauten his skin.

Lounging in his draped throne, which was in the form of an interrupted circle, Jareth looked at the bawling figure of Toby. With any luck, he might grow up to be an intelligent goblin. He might make some jokes, or anyway see he point of Jareth's. He might be of some help in ruling this ramshackle empire. At the very least, he might have some fresh ideas about mischief. Two-headed sheep, curdled milk, banging pans, snatched nightclothes, barren fruit trees, shifted tables, moldy bread—Jareth had seen it all, much too often. But this lot, rooting and pratfalling around all day, still found such tired old clichés a perfect riot every time. Pitiful, they were.

Jareth yawned, and looked wearily around the room. The walls had been decorated with skulls and bats. 'Dear god,' he thought. 'Skulls and bats yet. How jejune could you get? He looked hopefully at the clock. Half past three, the sword-shaped hands indicated. Another nine and a half hours to wait, until the goblin striker struck the thirteen. He would have to do something to pass the time.

He stood up from the throne, stretched his arms and paced restlessly. Another goblin came dashing past. Jareth reached down and picked him up by the scruff of the neck. The goblin's eyes boggled at this.

"You're a boggling goblin," Jareth said, with a forced laugh.

The rest of the goblins howled with merriment. Jareth had been their king for as long as they could remember, which was about four seconds at best, and they hoped he would be king forevermore.

Jareth winced with the pain of it all.

Sarah and Stephanie were wandering along brick corridors. They were still high and forbidding, but at least they didn't stretch out to the end of space and time, and sometimes there was a flight of steps, which made a nice change. Whenever they came to a fork or turning and made a choice, Sarah had found a sensible way of ensuring that they did not wander in circles: with the lipstick she had put in her pocket at home, she and Stephanie took turns choosing and made an arrow on a brick at each junction, to show where they had come from. And whenever the girls put the lipstick away and walked off down their new corridor, a little creature would lift the marked brick, turn it upside down, and replace it, so that the arrow was not visible.

After they had marked eighteen arrows, a piece of the lipstick broke off as Sarah was doing the next one. Determined to remain calm, she screwed another length out, and the girls went on their chosen way, up some steps, into a chamber. Across the end of the passage a squad of goblins rushed by, but Sarah and Stephanie's eyes were fixed on what lay ahead and they did not see them.

The chamber was a dead end. The girls peeked in every alcove and behind the buttresses, but there was definitely no way out. They shrugged, and retraced their steps to the nineteenth arrow. When they reached the corner, they looked for their arrow and could not see it. That's odd, they thought. They were sure it was right here, at this corner, on that brick there. The bricks were blank. The sisters frowned and looked about them. On the floor Stephanie spotted the broken-off piece of lipstick. She pointed it out to Sarah. They looked again, hard, and could still see no arrow. That proved it, then. Something fishy was going on. Sarah threw down the rest of the lipstick. "Someone's been rubbing out our marks," she said loudly, certain that the culprit must be close enough to hear her. "What a horrid place this is! It's not fair!"

"That's right," a voice behind them said. "It's _not_ fair!"

Both girls jumped, and whipped around.

Behind them, in the chamber that had been a dead end, they now saw two carved doors in the wall, and a guard posted in front of each door. At least, they thought, they must be guards, since they stood foursquare and were emblazoned with armor. But as Sarah and Stephanie studied them, they were not so sure. The guards were quite comic, really. Their enormous shields, which were curiously patterned with geometrical figures and scrolls and devices, looked extremely heavy, which would account for the straddle-legged stance each of them had. Poor things, the girls thought, they have to stand like that all the time just to stay upright. The one to their left had incredibly shifty eyes beneath his helmet, and Sarah said to herself that she would call him Alf, after an uncle of her and Stephanie's with eyes like that; but then she reflected that his not-quite-identical twin to her right (she couldn't see his eyes at all because his helmet was too big for him) should therefore be called Ralph (R for Right, you see), and so mentally she corrected the spelling of the first one's name to Alph (not that it mattered to anyone, because she wouldn't be writing these names down).

Having settled, in her mind, the business of names, she noticed the most remarkable thing of all, which was that from underneath each shield peered another face, upside down, a little like a jack of spades gone wrong. The upside-down characters, whom she named Jim and Tim (the first rhymed pair that came to her mind), seemed to be hanging on to their uncomfortable positions by the great gnarled and horny hands she could see gripping the bottom of the shields. They must have added yet more to the burdens under which Alph and Ralph staggered.

Of course, Stephanie noticed all of this herself, but she decided on a set of names much faster. Being a Dr. Seuss fan, she thought to herself to call them, in order from left to right, across the top, and then the bottom: Thing One and Thing Two, Thing Red and Thing Blue (coordinating with the colors of their shields, not that it matters much since the rest of the narrative text will be using the names Sarah thought of).

It was Jim Upside Down who made the jump by addressing Sarah. He added, "And that's only half of it."

"Half of what?" asked Sarah, twisting and ducking her head with Stephanie to get a good look at Jim's face. It would, they felt, have been faintly rude to remain upright. You had to adjust to people you met, even here.

"Half of twice as much," Jim replied.

"Half of twice as much of _what?"_ Sarah was exasperated.

"Twice as much as half of it."

Stephanie cocked her head to the side in confusion. 'Again, what was _it,'_ she wondered, 'supposed to be?'

"Look." Sarah raised a finger and pointed to the back wall of the chamber. "This was a dead end a moment ago." She said.

"No." it was Tim Upside Down speaking now. " _That's_ the dead end, behind you."

The girls stood upright again and turned around. He was right. The way by which they had come in here was indeed now barred by a solid wall. "Oh!" Sarah exclaimed indignantly. "It's not fair. This place keeps changing. What are we supposed to do?"

"It depends who's doing the supposing," Jim said.

"Not half," Tim agreed.

"Try one of the doors," suggested Jim.

"One of them leads to the castle," Tim told the girls in a cheerful voice, "and the other leads to certain death."

Sarah gasped and exchanged a look of nervous excitement with Stephanie. "Which is which?"

Jim shook his upside-down head. "We can't tell you."

"Why not?"

"We don't know!" Jim crowed triumphantly.

"But _they_ do." Tim nodded confidently at Alph and Ralph. That took some doing, upside down, Sarah and Stephanie thought.

"Then I'll ask them," Sarah said.

Before she could say anything more, Ralph was speaking in a very slow, pedantic voice. "Ah! No, you can't ask _us_. You can ask only _one_ of us." He appeared to have difficulty in getting the words out at all, especially the _C'_ s and _K'_ s.

"It's in the rules." Alph's voice came fast and sneering, and at the same time his eyes shifted uneasily. He was tapping a finger on some ciphers on his shield, which were presumably the rules. "And I think I should warn you that one of us _always_ the truth, and one of us always lies. That's a rule, too." His glance flickered at Ralph. " _He_ always lies."

"Don't listen to him," Ralph said, sententiously. "He's lying. I'm the one who tells the truth."

"That's a lie!" Alph retorted.

Jim and Tim were snickering behind their shields, rather insolently, the girls thought. "You see," Tim told Sarah, "even if you ask one of them, you won't know if the answer is true or false."

"Now wait a minute," she said. "I know this riddle. We've heard it before, right?"

Stephanie nodded. She remembered it well. All they had to do was ask one of the guards what answer the other would give, and then do the opposite.

"But I've never figured it out."

Stephanie almost slapped her forehead. She reached for her memo pad again, but Sarah stopped her.

"It's all right," she said. "I can do this. I want to do it." Stephanie left the memo pad in her pocket.

They heard Ralph muttering to himself, "He's lying."

Sarah was scratching her brow. "There's one question I can ask and it doesn't matter which one of them I ask it." She clicked her tongue, impatient with herself. "Oh, what _could_ it be?" Stephanie bit her lip. She was getting antsy, wanting to say the answer, but unable to.

"Come on, come on," Tim said tetchily. "We can't stand around here all day."

"What do you mean, we can't?" Jim snapped. "That's our job. We're gatekeepers."

"Oh, yes. I forgot."

"Be quiet," Sarah ordered. "I can't think."

"I tell the truth," Ralph declared pedantically, from under his helmet.

"Ooh!" Alph answered mechanically. "What a lie!"

Sarah was trying to work it out logically for herself. With a finger thoughtfully in the air, she reasoned, "The first thing to do is find out which one's the liar… but, no, there's no way of doing that. So… the next thing to do is to find a question you can put to either one… and get the same answer." Stephanie nodded in approval.

"Oh, that's a good one," Tim was guffawing. "One of us always tells the truth and the other one always lies, and you want to find a question we'll both give the same answer to? Oh, that'll be the day. That's a good one, that is. Oh."

Sarah narrowed her eyes. She thought she might have gotten it. "Now," she said, "whom shall I ask?"

Alph and Ralph pointed at each other.

With a little smile, Sarah said to Ralph, "Answer yes or no. Would _he_ ," and she pointed at Alph, "tell me that this door," she pointed at the door behind Ralph, "leads to the castle?" Behind her, Stephanie pumped her fist in the air victoriously. She got it! Sarah had finally asked the right question.

Alph and Ralph looked at the girls, then at each other. They conferred in whispers.

Ralph looked up at Sarah. "Uh… yes."

"Then the _other_ door leads to the castle," Sarah concluded. "And this door leads to certain death."

"How do you know?" Ralph asked slowly. His voice was aggrieved. "He could be telling you the truth."

"Then you wouldn't be," Sarah replied. "So if you tell me he said yes, I know the answer was no." She was very pleased with herself. And rightly so. Stephanie, grinning, held one of her hands up, and the two sisters exchanged a high-five.

Ralph and Alph looked dejected, feeling that they had obscurely been cheated. "But _I_ could be telling the truth," Ralph objected.

"Then he would be lying," Sarah said, allowing herself a broad smile of pleasure. "So if you tell me that he said yes, then the answer would still be no."

"Wait a minute," Ralph said. He frowned. "Is that right?"

"I don't know," replied Ralph airily. "I wasn't listening."

"It's right," Sarah told them. "I figured it out. I could until now." She beamed at Stephanie. "I may be getting smarter."

They walked to the door behind Alph.

"Very clever, I'm sure," Jim remarked disappointedly, and stuck his tongue out at the two girls.

Sarah stuck hers out back at him as she pushed open the door. Over her shoulder, as she moved to pass through it first, she said, "This is a piece of cake."

She stepped through the doorway, and fell straight down a shaft, along with Stephanie, who had grabbed ahold of her sister in an attempt to save her, only to be pulled down with her.

Sarah screamed. Stephanie opened her mouth, but no sound came out. The top of the shaft was a fast-dwindling disk of light.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5: Bad Memories**

* * *

As Sarah screamed, dropping backward down the shaft, with Stephanie just behind her, the two girls realized that their fall was being slightly impeded by things brushing against them. Large, thick leaves they might be, or some sort of tough fungus sprouting from the walls of this pit. Whatever they were, the girls tried to grab hold of some, to save themselves from the terrible smash they expected every instant. They were falling too fast.

Then, by blind chance, Sarah's wrist landed smack in one of the things, which at once closed firmly, and she, in turn, grabbed Stephanie with her free hand when she smacked into her. With a jolt that nearly disjointed her, Sarah found herself dangling by one arm and holding onto one of Stephanie's wrists with the other. "Oh!" she gasped in relief, while Stephanie silently thanked their lucky stars, and they both found themselves heaving for breath. Falling like that was a terrifying experience.

They looked down the shaft, to see how close they had been to breaking every bone. All they could see was a long tunnel, lined with the things that had broken their fall. They looked up. The doorway through which they had entered the shaft was very high above them.

As their eyes adjusted to the gloomy light, the girls saw what it was that had caught hold of Sarah: a hand. All around them, protruding from sides of the shaft, hands were groping the air, like reeds under water.

Sarah's relief gave way to a sick feeling: she was in the grip of a hand with no arm or body attached to it, and she had no apparent means of ever releasing herself. Perhaps they were carnivorous hands, or like those spiders that simply dissolved you away over a long period of time.

Stephanie was also suspicious of the hands, but she could feel herself slipping a little from her sister's grip. It was a real strain on Sarah to keep holding her up. She looked nervously up and down the shaft again, this time to see if there were any skeletons dangling there, as in a jungle trap. She saw none. Stephanie decided to relieve her sister of her burden and let one of the hands grab her free arm.

Sarah was surprised by this, and little concerned, but at least she didn't have to worry so much about dropping her anymore.

And now they felt other hands reaching for them and finding them, taking hold of them by their legs and their bodies. There were hands on their thighs, their ankles, their necks. The sisters shuddered, and Sarah shouted, "Stop that!" Knowing it was futile, she called, "Help! Help!" The girls writhed, trying to shake them all off, and with their free hands reached out for a hold and each other, in a despairing attempt to climb away together. All they could see to grasp hold of was yet another hand. Hesitantly, Stephanie put hers in it, and it responded immediately, grasping her hand firmly. With the idea of perhaps climbing up the hands as though on a ladder, she tried to free her wrist from the first hand. It was no good. Now she was more tightly held than ever, stuck in a web of hands.

"Help!" Sarah whimpered.

Each girl felt a tap on their shoulder, and they turned their heads to see what it was. To their bewilderment, they saw that hands to one side of them contrived to form themselves into a face of sorts, with finger-and-thumb circles for eyes and two hands working together to fashion a mouth. And the mouth spoke to them.

"What do you mean, 'Help'?" it said. "We _are_ helping. We're the Helping Hands."

'Well,' Stephanie reflected, 'I suppose they did help us by stopping our fall…'

"You're hurting," Sarah told them. It was not quite true. Fear, rather than pain, was what afflicted her.

Now there were several more faces of hands around them.

"Would you like us to let go?" one of them asked.

The girls glanced down the shaft. "Uh… no." Sarah said, while Stephanie shook her head emphatically in the negative.

"Well, then," one of the mouths said. "Come on. Which way?"

"Which way?" Sarah asked, nonplussed.

"Up or down?"

"Oh…" She was more confused. "Er…" She looked up the shaft toward the light, but she thought that would be a kind of retreat. She looked down, into the unknown, unfathomable abyss.

Stephanie didn't have to think about it. For all they knew, down could be a dead end. She wanted to go up. She had already considered why there might be a pitfall in the path that was supposed to have been safe, and half suspected their whole exchange with the guardians of the doors may have all been an act, and that both had been capable of lying from the start. If this was the case, then they should go up and try the other door. But perhaps they really did choose the right door, after all, no one actually said it would be _safe_ , just that the path behind it led to the castle. And that was where they needed to go. So either way, Stephanie had reached the conclusion that the solution was to go back up. But, since she couldn't speak and had no free hands to signal with, she had to wait for Sarah to answer for the both of them.

"Come on! Come on!" an impatient voice urged them.

"We haven't got all day."

Haven't you? the girls thought to themselves. What else where they going to do, stuck to the sides of this shaft?

"It's a big decision for them," said a sympathetic voice.

"Which way do you want to go?" asked an insistent one.

Everyone in the Labyrinth was so peremptory. ' _I've_ got good reason to be in a hurry,' Sarah felt. 'We've only got thirteen hours to find our baby brother, and heaven knows how much time has already gone by. But why are all these people—if you can call them people—so bossy?'

"Come on! Come on!"

"Well, er…" Sarah hesitated. Up was chicken, and down was dreadful.

Many faces were watching her indecisiveness, including Stephanie's. Several of the hand faces were snickering, covering their mouths with another hand.

Sarah took a deep breath. "Well, since that's the way we're pointed… we'll go down." She was surprised by the look of disbelief Stephanie shot her way.

"They chose down?" The girls heard snickers behind their hands. "They chose— _down_!"

"Was that wrong?" Sarah inquired timidly.

"Too late now," said one of the hand faces, and with that they started to hand the two girls down the shaft, not roughly. Sarah and Stephanie heard them singing something like a shanty.

"Down, down, down, down,  
Down, hand 'em down, boys.  
We'll all go to town, boys.

Down, down, down, down,  
Down, hand 'em down, boys,  
Never a frown, boys,  
Down, down, down, down."

And down they went, far down, until Stephanie and Sarah found themselves momentarily above a manhole, while Helping Hands removed the cover of it. Then the lowest hands let go of Stephanie, dropping her neatly down the manhole, repeating the process with Sarah, and the last they saw of the hands was their waving goodbye, helpfully.

As they landed on the stone floor of a dark, small cell, one on top of the other, the cover was replaced on the manhole, with a clunk. Stephanie, who was now under Sarah, had let out a noisy gasp, which sounded like an "oomph", upon impact. She was fairly certain Sarah's knee was in her spleen. In pitch darkness, Sarah rolled off of her little sister and sat down. Her face was blank.

The picture of her silent face and Stephanie lying on the floor, massaging her new bruises, was clearly beamed to a crystal in the chamber of the Goblin King.

"They're in the oubliette," Jareth observed.

The goblins cackled wickedly, dancing and prancing around. Their jaws gaped with merriment, and they slapped their thighs.

"Shut up," Jareth told them.

They froze. Their heads twitched around to look at their King. A sly goblin inquired, "Wrong laugh?"

"They shouldn't have gotten as far as the oubliette." Jareth was still staring at the picture of the two sisters in the crystal. Stephanie was already standing up and using the light from her swatch's glow-in-the-dark face to try to see more of their surroundings. He shook his head. "They should have given up by now."

"They'll never give up," said a keen goblin, watching as Stephanie began gesturing in the dark for Sarah to try climbing onto her shoulders to see if she could reach the manhole, though it was unlikely that Sarah would be able to see much other than the hand illuminated by the weak light of the watch in the dense blackness.

"Ha." Jareth said mirthlessly. "Won't they? They'll give up soon enough when they have to start all over."

It pleased him to think of his Labyrinth as a board game; if you got too close to the winning square, you might find a snake taking you back to the start. No one had ever won against him, and very few had gotten as far as this disturbing pair of girls, who were too old to be turned into goblins. Jareth examined their faces in the crystal. The younger sister was interesting, despite that disrespectful mouth. He liked her much better now that she was silent. He felt particularly drawn to Sarah, who was the older, more beautiful of the two, with her mature body and green eyes that shined like pale jewels. Too old to be a goblin, but too young to be kept by him, damn her innocent eyes. They both had to be sent back to square one immediately, before they became a serious threat to Toby, and he knew just the snake for the job. "Higgle!" he called, spinning the crystal.

Hoggle's face appeared in it. "It's Hoggle, your Majesty."

"They're in the oubliette," Jareth said. "Get them back to the outer walls."

Hoggle cocked his head, grimacing. "They're quite determined, your Majesty. It won't be easy—"

"Do it." Jareth flipped the crystal into the air, where it vanished like a bubble.

He chuckled, imagining Sarah and Stephanie's faces when they found themselves beside Hoggle's pond again. Then he threw back his head and roared.

The goblins watched him uncertainly. Was it all right to laugh now?

"Well, go ahead." Jareth told them.

With the simple glee that is natural to evil-hearted folk, the goblins launched themselves into their full routine of cackles and snickers. The keen goblin directed them, like a conductor, bringing them up to a crescendo of malign mirth.

Sarah sat on the floor of the black cell wishing she had asked the Helping Hands to take them up the shaft, toward the light, trying to understand why Stephanie appeared to be waving her hand around. What could they hope for in this place?

Four of her senses sharpened in the darkness; she detected a little scratching sound. "Who's there? Who's there with us?" Her body was tense with alarm, as was Stephanie's when she stopped and heard it, too.

"Me," a gruff voice replied.

There was another noise of scratching, followed a glare of light as a match ignited, and in turn set a torch aflame. Hoggle was sitting there, on a rough bench, holding the torch up so that he and the two girls could see each other. Stephanie, who had frozen in a rather ridiculous position, allowed herself to relax.

"Oh," Sarah said, "it's you. I am glad to see you, Hoggle." She was so relieved she could have hugged him.

"Yes, well," Hoggle said brusquely, as though he were slightly embarrassed by the situation. "Well, nice to see you, too."

Sarah and Stephanie went to stand beside him in the torchlight. "What are you doing here? How did you _get_ here?"

Hoggle shrugged, and half turned away. "I knows you were going to get into trouble soon as I sees you. So I—I've come to give you a hand."

'A helping hand,' Sarah thought, and shivered. She had had enough of them. "You mean," she asked, "you're going to help me unriddle the Labyrinth?"

"Unriddle the Labyrinth?" Hoggle answered scornfully. "Don't you know where you are?"

The two girls looked about them. In the circle of the torchlight, which was much brighter and broader than the glow from Stephanie's swatch, they saw stone walls, stone floor, stone ceiling. One rough wooden bench was the only luxury.

"Oh, they're looking around now, are they?" Hoggle's scorn had turn to sarcasm. "I suppose the little misses have noticed there ain't no doors—just the hole up there?"

Sarah and Stephanie peered as hard as they could into the shadows, and realized that he was right.

"This," Hoggle was saying, "is an oubliette. The Labyrinth's full of them."

Sarah was stung by his knowing, mocking tone of voice. "Really?" she replied, matching his sarcasm. "Now, fancy that."

"Don't try to sound smart," he told her. "You don't even know what an oubliette is."

'An _oubliette_ is a specific type of dungeon that has only one escape route—through a trap door in its ceiling,' Stephanie thought, crossing her arms sassily. It was like the Cadillac of dungeons. She had seen them depicted in horror movies and books before, unsuspecting places where psycho killers kept their victims.

"Do you?" Sarah asked, unaware since she was not as much of a horror buff as her sister.

"Yes," Hoggle said, with a touch of pride. "It's a place you put people to forget about them."

'Yeah… that, too.' Stephanie conceded.

Sarah remembered her verbs in French class, and, pleased with herself said, "Of course. It comes from the French verb _oublier,_ to forget. But you already know that, naturally."

Hoggle raised his chin to scratch it, at the same time letting his eyes roll portentously around the cell.

What he had said began to sink in, and Sarah and Stephanie looked at the flickering stonewalls and shuddered. To forget about them… Was that what Jareth was doing with them? Just forgetting about them? Sarah began to feel indignant. It wasn't fair. He had challenged them to this contest. All the odds were stacked against them, but they had made a brave enough start—he couldn't, now, just dump them in here to rot. Could he? Stephanie had a feeling he could. After all, they knew next to nothing about him, other than that he apparently hated to lose, and who were they to him? But, she reasoned, if Hoggle could get in then there must be another way out, because he certainly hadn't come through the trap door. Having been standing right under it, she knew he would have landed on top of her if he had.

Hoggle had taken the torch and waddled into one corner of the oubliette. He beckoned the two sisters to follow. They did, casting great shadows across the walls. Lying in the corner was a skeleton, on its back, knees bent, head propped against the wall.

Sarah put her hand to her mouth and was about to scream, glanced at Stephanie, then thought better of it. She would force herself to remain cool, too.

"You see?" Hoggle was squinting up at them. "This Labyrinth is a dangerous place. No place for little girls."

They looked at him. Who was he calling little?

He nodded at the skeleton. "That's how you'll end up if you keep going. In an oubliette, like him. Lot of bad memories in the Labyrinth, I can tell you. What you got to do, little missies, is get out of here."

"But we must find our brother."

"Forget all that. Now it so happens," Hoggle said, scratching his cheek with a forefinger, "that I knows a shortcut out of the whole Labyrinth from here."

"No," Sarah said at once, and Stephanie nodded firmly in agreement. "We're not giving up now. We've come too far. We've done too well."

He nodded, and in a smooth voice assured them, "You've been wonderful." He shook his head, and made a sucking noise on his teeth. "But this is only the edge of the Labyrinth. You've hardly started. From here on in, it gets worse."

There was something in his confidential tone that made Sarah and Stephanie suspicious. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but Stephanie thought it was strangely convenient for him to show up now, when they were most in need of help, and after they had just chosen the door that would take them to the castle, especially since he was suddenly being so nice to them after a history of nothing but gruffness. "Why are you so concerned about us?" Sarah asked him.

"What?" Hoggle sounded aggrieved. "I _am._ That's all. Two nice young girls… terrible black oubliette…"

"Listen," Sarah interrupted him, "you like jewelry, don't you?"

He pursed his face. "Why?" he asked slowly.

"You've got some very nice pieces." She pointed to the chain of ornaments dangling from his belt. In the torchlight they could not be sure, but the girls fancied that a smirking little blush was on his whiskery cheek.

"Thank you," he said.

"If you'll help us through the Labyrinth…" Sarah took a breath. "… I'll give you…" She slipped her bracelet off. It was only a cheap plastic thing, not one of the special ones that her mother had given her, and which she wore when she was going out. "… _this_ ," she concluded, holding it out to him.

"Hm." Hoggle licked his lips and eyed the bracelet appraisingly.

"You like it, don't you?" She could see that he did. He also had an eye for the ring on her finger. That had no intrinsic value either, though Sarah was fond of it because their mother had worn it when playing Hermione in _The Winter's Tale._ Stephanie noticed he was eyeing her bright and shiny bracelets as well. He could have one of them, too, if he asked, but she hoped he would not want the ring on her finger, which had a small but real emerald on it, and had been a gift from Jeremy to celebrate her recovery from her illness. Not only did it possess intrinsic value, it was a symbol of everything she had overcome. There was also the matter of the locket around her neck, which held pictures of her family, and had been a gift from her father.

"So-so," Hoggle said. "Tell you what. You give me that bracelet and here's what I'll do. I'll show you the way out of the whole Labyrinth. How's that?"

"You were going to do that in any case," Sarah pointed out.

"Yes," he replied. "That's what would make it a particularly nice gesture on your part." He held his hand out.

"Oh, no!" Sarah withdrew the bracelet abruptly. "For this you must show us the way _in_. The whole way."

Hoggle snorted "What makes the little miss so certain _I_ knows my way through it?"

"Well," she answered, "You got here, didn't you?"

"What?" Hoggle chuckled, shaking his head. "Yes, yes, but… I told you, this is just the fringe of it all. You've got nowhere yet. Come on, where's your common sense? You don't want to go farther than this. Really. You've done all you can, and more. You have proved you're smart, brave girls, and you don't deserve what would become of you in here." He glanced pointedly at the skeleton, which seemed to be jiggling in the flicker of the torchlight. "No, no, you deserve to be saved from that. I'll say that much for you. So—how about it?" He gazed up at them with eyes of piggy shrewdness from beneath his sprouting eyebrows.

The girls looked back at him candidly. Whatever his game was, he played it badly. Sarah had to bite her lip to stop herself from giggling at him. "I'll tell you what," she said, narrowing her eyes. "If you won't take us all the way through the Labyrinth, just take us as far as you can. And then we'll try to do the rest of it ourselves." Stephanie nodded in agreement.

He looked disgusted at them. "Tcha! Of all the headstrong numbskulls I ever came across…"

Sarah dangled the bracelet before his eyes. "Fair deal," she offered. "No strings. One bracelet. Hmm? How about it?"

The bracelet danced in her hand, and his eyes were dancing with it. Grudgingly he said, "Make it two."

Stephanie removed her shiniest bracelet and held it up for him to see.

Hoggle nodded in approval of her selection. "What are these, anyway?" he asked.

"Plastic," Sarah answered, with a small shrug.

His eyes shone. Then he raised his stumpy arm for the girls to put the bracelets onto his wrist. He looked at them there and could not conceal his pride. "I don't promise nothing," he said. "But"—he grunted resignedly—"I'll take you as far as I can. Then you're on your own. Right?"

"Right," Sarah agreed.

He nodded. His eyes were still shining as he looked at the bracelets on his wrist. "Plastic!" he murmured, thrilled.

Stephanie wondered if plastic was actually valuable here. It appeared to be quite a novelty.

"Come on, then," Sarah urged him.

Hoggle sprang into action. He seized the heavy wooden bench and, with a strength Sarah and Stephanie wouldn't have suspected in his small and round-shouldered body, he upended it so that the seat was flat against the wall. The girls were surprised to see two doorknobs on the underside of the seat, one on the left and one on the right, and they were soon disconcerted when Hoggle turned one knob and the seat became a door into the stone wall. 'That's not fair,' Sarah thought, while Stephanie marveled over the feat. With a mischievous grin—because he was enjoying himself, showing off to the young misses—Hoggle walked through the doorway.

The girls were about to follow him when they heard a crashing and clattering. Broomsticks and buckets fell out of the doorway into the oubliette. They grinned, recognizing the old broom-closet joke.

"Oh, damn!" they heard Hoggle say, within the cupboard. He came out backward, and avoided their eyes as he thrust the brooms and buckets back inside and closed the door.

Still sheepish, he grasped the other doorknob. "Can't be right all the time, can we?" he muttered. This time, he opened the door rather less boldly. He peered through. "This is it," he told them. "Come on, then."

The girls followed him into a dimly lit corridor with walls of grotesquely carved rock.

They were working their way along the corridor when a voice boomed, "DON'T GO ON!"

Sarah jumped violently and grabbed onto Stephanie, which made her jump, too. They looked all around them, and saw no one, except Hoggle. And then they realized: carved in the stone wall was a mouth. Standing back from it, they saw that the mouth was part of a huge face. Similar faces lined both sides of the corridor. As the girls and Hoggle passed them, each intoned a deeply resonant message.

"Go back while you still can!"

"This is not the way!"

"Take heed and go no farther!"

"Beware! Beware!"

"It will soon be too late!"

Sarah and Stephanie put their hands over their ears. The warnings seemed to be echoing inside their heads.

Hoggle, bustling onward, looked around to see where they had gone to, and saw them standing. "Pah." He waved his hand. "Don't take no notice of them. They're just False-Alarms. You get a lot like them in the Labyrinth. It means you're on the right track."

"Oh, no, you're not," a face boomed.

"Do shut up," Hoggle snapped back at it.

"Sorry, sorry," the face said. "Only doing me job."

"Well, you don't need to do it to us," Hoggle answered, and led the way on down the passage.

The face watched them go. "Shrewd cookies," it murmured appreciatively.

The passageway twisted and turned, but on the whole Sarah and Stephanie had the impression that they were moving forward, if such a direction existed in the Labyrinth, and they felt encouraged. They passed another carved face.

"Oh, beware!" the face exclaimed. "For—"

"Don't bother." Hoggle flapped his hand dismissively.

"Oh, _please,_ " the face begged. "I haven't said it for such a long time. You've no idea what it's like, stuck here in this wall, and with—"

"All right," Hoggle told it. "But don't expect us to take any notice."

The face brightened up. "Oh, no, of course not." It cleared its throat. "For the you take will you to certain destruction!" It paused. "Thanks," it added politely.

While the face was droning on, a small crystal had been rolling down the passage from behind Sarah and Stephanie and Hoggle. It overtook them as they turned a corner, and they saw it bounce on ahead of them. A blind beggar, with a beak-like face, squatted with his back to the wall, was holding out a tin cup for collecting alms. The crystal ball hopped smartly into the cup. Remembering the last time they had seen a crystal like that, Stephanie had a bad feeling about this encounter.

The sisters heard Hoggle groan. They looked at him. His mouth was open, and his eyes were staring at the beggar and his cup. 'Bad feeling confirmed,' Stephanie thought.

The beggar turned his face toward them. "So what have we here?" he asked.

"Uh, nothing," Hoggle spluttered.

"Nothing? _Nothing!_?" The beggar rose up and ripped away his disguise.

Hoggle froze. Stephanie tensed. Sarah gasped. It was Jareth.

"Your Majesty…" Hoggle bowed so obsequiously that he was at risk of performing a forward roll. "What…," he swallowed, and smiled haggardly, "what… what a nice surprise."

"Hello, Hedgewart," said the King of the Goblins.

"Hogwart," Sarah corrected him.

 _"Hoggle,"_ Hoggle said, gritting his teeth.

Feeling a silent nervous giggle forming in her throat, Stephanie had to bite her lip to avoid looking too amused. Poor Hoggle. Everyone kept butchering his name.

"Hoggle," Jareth said, in a kindly conversational voice, "can it be that you're helping these girls?"

"Helping?" Hoggle prevaricated. "In what sense? Uh…"

"In the sense that you're taking them farther into the Labyrinth," Jareth said.

"Oh," Hoggle replied. "In _that_ sense."

"Yes."

"Oh, no, no, your Majesty. I was leading them back to the beginning."

"What!" Sarah exclaimed. Stephanie pinched the bridge of her nose. He was such a terrible liar.

Hoggle forced his lips into an ingratiating smile for Jareth. "I told _them_ I was going to help them unriddle the labyrinth—a little trickery on my part…" He guffawed and gulped. "But _actually_ …"

Jareth, smiling pleasantly, interrupted him. "And what are those plastic things around your wrist?"

"These? I…" Hoggle looked wide-eyed at the bracelet, which someone must have slipped onto his wrist when he was snoozing and which he had unaccountably not even noticed there until this moment. "Why," he stuttered, "er, my goodness, well I never, where did these come from?"

"Hoggle." Jareth spoke levelly. "If I thought for one second you were betraying me, I would be forced to suspend you _headfirst_ in the Bog of Eternal Stench."

"Oh, no, your Majesty." Hoggle's knees were wobbling. "Not that. Not the Eternal Stench."

"Oh, _yes,_ HHoggle." Jareth turned and looked at the two sisters, his eyes shifted from the youngest to the oldest. He smiled at Sarah. "And you, Sarah—how are you enjoying the Labyrinth?"

Sarah swallowed. Beside her, she heard Hoggle's feet shuffling. Stephanie was the picture of calm. Determined not to allow Jareth to intimidate her, Sarah affected a nonchalance she was far from feeling.

"It's…" she hesitated. "It's a piece of cake."

Stephanie crossed her arms and smiled smartly up at him.

Jareth raised one elegant eyebrow.

Hoggle's eyes closed in dismay.

"Really?" Jareth sounded intrigued. "Then how about making it a more entertaining challenge?" He flicked his wrist, and a trapdoor opened beneath Stephanie and swallowed her up in the blink of an eye, and closed shut behind her. The expression of shock on Sarah's face was priceless. He watched her drop to her knees and try to pry it open again. It would not budge, of course.

"Stephanie!" she cried anxiously. "Hold on, Stephanie!"

Jareth looked up, and in the space of air before his eyes the thirteen-hour clock appeared. He gestured gracefully, and the hands visibly began to turn faster. "Remember, Sarah, I told you before you entered the Labyrinth, that if you and your sister started this together, you had to finish it together. If you want Toby back, you must reach the castle together. If either one of you shows up without the other, it's game over."

"That's not fair," Sarah said.

"You say that so often. I wonder what your basis for comparison is."

With a slight of hand, Jareth drew forth the crystal ball and tossed it down the tunnel. At once, from the darkness, came a noise: a crashing, whirring, trundling noise, distant as yet, but getting closer all the time, and louder. Hoggle's face was a mask of panic. Sarah found herself instinctively shrinking away from the approaching din.

"The Labyrinth is a piece of cake, is it?" Jareth laughed. "Well, now we can see how you deal with this little slice." While his mocking laugh still rang, he vanished.

Sarah and Hoggle stared along the passageway. When they saw what was coming at them, their jaws dropped and they trembled.

A solid wall of furiously spinning knives and chopping cleavers was bearing inexorably down upon them. Dozens of keen blades glittered in the light, every one of them pointing forward and whirring wickedly. The wall of blades completely filled the tunnel, like a subway train, and it would chop them into little pieces in the blink of an eye. And, Sarah noticed with horror, along the bottom of the slashing machine was a busy row of brushes, for tidying up after itself.

"The Cleaners!" Hoggle shrieked, and took off.

"What?" Sarah was so terrified she was mesmerically rooted where she stood.

"Run!" Hoggle's shout came echoing back from some distance away and brought her to her senses. She dashed after him.

The slashing machine came clanking and trundling remorselessly on behind them. All that was needed for Sarah and Hoggle's part in the story to finish now was that they should come to a dead end. Around a corner, they found one. A heavily barred door closed the tunnel in front of them.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6: Up and Down**

* * *

Sarah gasped. The whizzing blades were rapidly drawing nearer.

Hoggle was pawing pathetically at the great door and mumbling to himself.

But Sarah wasn't listening to him. She was looking around for an escape—above, below. She dashed along the side walls, looking for a handle or button. There had to be a way out. That was how the Labyrinth worked. There was always some trick, if only she could find it.

The clanking, whirring, seething, brushing noise was louder. She glanced momentarily at what Hoggle was doing. He was still just scrabbling at the door. It was no use trusting to him. What could she do? What?

Her eyes fell on a part of the wall, to one side of the door, that looked distinct from the rest, a panel of metal plates. She pushed it and felt it give a little.

"Hoggle!" she shouted above the echoing din.

"Sarah!" he answered, hammering his pudgy fists against the door and kicking it, as though it could be expected to relent in the face of such frustration. "Don't leave me!"

"Get over here and help me," she yelled back at him.

Hoggle joined her. Together they shoved with all their weight at the metal plates.

"Come on," Sarah told him, " _push,_ you little double-crosser. _Push!"_

Hoggle was pushing. "I can explain," he panted.

"PUSH!"

The panel caved in suddenly. They fell through the space it left and sprawled flat on it.

Behind them, the machine slashed through the air just beside their feet. When it reached the great barred door, there was a terrible crunching sound as the knives and cleavers bit through the wood, spitting it out as splinters, which the whirling brushes swept up neatly. The machine was cranked along by four goblins, standing on a platform behind the wall of knives. They were grunting and sweating with the effort of turning handles and working levers to keep the contraption whirring. The racket clattered onward, through the demolished doorway, and off into the distance.

Sarah lay on her back, recovering her breath. Hoggle looked down at her. "He's throwing everything at us," he said, and shook his head with a trace of admiration. "The Cleaners, the Eternal Stench—the whole works. He must think a lot of you."

Sarah answered with a faint, forced smile. "He's got some funny ideas." She was worried about Stephanie and wondered what he had done to her.

"You want to go back for your sister?"

Sarah furrowed her brow and frowned as she thought it over. The trapdoor had been sealed shut behind Stephanie, so they could not follow her that way. The question was, where did it lead? Where _was_ Stephanie? She hoped it was not another oubliette, though it probably wasn't, since it sounded, from their earlier conversation, as though Jareth had been the one who sent Hoggle to them. Sarah hoped his goal had only been to separate them, and Stephanie was not trapped in some dark, terrible place with no hope of escape. 'If I were Stephanie, and I were not trapped…,' Sarah thought, 'what would I do?' The answer was obvious, knowing Stephanie. She would keep going, no matter what. Stephanie could do anything once she set her mind to it. If Sarah wanted to see her sister again, then her best chance was to follow their original plan and keep heading for the castle. She would have to trust Stephanie.

"No, I will keep going," she said, determined to meet up with Stephanie again, before she had a chance to reach it without her.

Hoggle was busy again. Eyes darting left and right beneath his bushy eyebrows, he clumped around in the shadows until he found what he was looking for. "This is what we need," he called. "Follow me."

She sat up and looked. There, on the floor of the tunnel they had entered, she saw the base of a ladder. It led up into darkness.

"Come on," Hoggle was calling. The first rung was too high for him to reach, and he was hopping around trying to jump up to it.

Sarah went over to him. The ladder looked unsafe to her. It was constructed from and odd assortment of bits of wood, planks, and branches, patched together with ends of rope and half-driven nails.

"Come on, give me a hand," Hoggle urged.

She stood with one hand holding the ladder. "How can I trust you," she asked, "now that I know you were taking me back to the start of the Labyrinth?"

"I _wasn't_ ," Hoggle protested, and stared fiercely at her with those piggy eyes of his. As a liar, he was so bad it was quite touching. "I told _him_ I was taking you to the start of the Labyrinth, to throw him off the scent, d'you see? Heh-heh. But actually—"

"Hoggle." Sarah smiled reproachfully at him. "How can I believe anything you say?"

"Well," he replied, screwing up one eye, "let me put it this way. What choice do you have?"

Sarah thought about it. "There is that."

"And now," Hoggle said, "the main thing is to get back up." And he started again to try and hop up to the first rung of the rickety ladder.

Sarah gave him a leg up, and watched him start, and followed. At any moment she thought the thing might collapse; but then, as Hoggle had said, what choice did she have?

Without turning his head, Hoggle called out, "The other main thing is not to look down."

"Right," she called back, and, as though it were a playground dare, she had to snatch a little look past her feet. "Ooooh!" she cried. They had climbed much higher than she would have thought possible in the time. The wobbly ladder seemed to stretch down below her forever. She could not see the bottom of it, nor could she see the top. She felt unable to climb another rung. Clutching the sides of the ladder, she started to shake. The whole ladder shook with her. Above, Hoggle clung desperately to the shaking ladder. "I said _don't_ look down," he moaned. "Or perhaps _don't_ means _do_ where you come from?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't realize…"

"Well, when you've done all the shaking you want, perhaps we could continue. Your sister, wherever she is, will be bound to beat you to the castle, at this rate."

"I can't help it," Sarah wailed.

"Jumping around like a monkey on a stick, Hoggle managed to answer, "Well, we'll just have to stay here until one of us falls off, or we turns into worm food."

"I _am_ sorry," Sarah told him, still shaking.

"Oh, good. She's sorry. In that case, I don't mind being shaken off to my certain death."

Breathing deeply, and looking resolutely upward, Sarah forced herself to think of happy, secure things: Merlin, her room, lovely evenings out with her mother, multiplication tables. She would have thought of Stephanie, too, but doing so would only brought up new worries and concerns at the moment. Anyway, it worked. She gained control of her body and started to climb again.

Hoggle felt her coming, and he went on, too. "See," he called to her, "you've got to understand my position. I'm a coward, and Jareth scares me."

"What kind of position is that?"

"No position. That's my point. And you wouldn't be so brave, either, if you'd ever smelled the Bog of Eternal Stench. It's… it's…" It was his turn to pause on the ladder, and control his shakes.

"What is it?"

"It makes me feel dizzy just to think of it."

"Is that all it does?" Sarah asked. "Smell?"

"Believe me, that's enough. Oh, dear me. You wait, you just wait, if you get that far."

"Can't you hold your nose?"

"No." Hoggle shuddered again, but started to climb. "Not with this smell. It gets into your ears. Up your mouth. Anywhere it can get in."

Sarah thought she could see the top at last. There were chinks of daylight above her head.

"But the worst thing," Hoggle continued, "is if you so much as get a splash of the mire on your skin you will never, _never_ be able to wash the stench off."

He was on the top rung now. He reached up, fiddled with a sliding bolt and pushed open a wooden hatchway.

Outside was a clear blue sky. Sarah had never seen anything so beautiful.

Meanwhile, Where did the Goblin King send Stephanie? That was what _she_ wanted to know. When the trap door opened, Stephanie had dropped down into yet another area of darkness, only this time, with a _splash_. Poor Stephanie had landed up to her knees in some kind of mysterious slimy sludge. The smell was positively putrid. The air was thick with the sour scent of rot and mildew and mold. It wasn't a crumb on the Bog of Eternal Stench, but it was still far worse than anything she had ever smelled before. She raised her wrist wearing the glowing swatch to try to get a better look at her surroundings. The walls and ceiling, slick with slime, reflected the dim light and amplified it enough for her to make out hints of her surroundings. She appeared to have landed in a narrow underground tunnel, one that was filled with all sorts of rotten organic matter, flotsam and jetsam, and other various kinds of wastes and debris. Stephanie shuddered. She was trying very hard not to think of what kind of specific ingredients might have gone into the making of the disgusting stew of ripe refuse and toxic leachate that she was standing in, and was very glad that all of her shots and vaccines were up to date.

Stephanie had never seen, or felt, anything so repulsive. It reminded her of the scene in _Star Wars_ , when the main characters ended up in the ship's garbage compactor. She froze, frowned and began to feel indignant as that sank in, and she realized where she must be. 'Oh, he did _not,'_ she thought, 'just throw me out with the trash. There better not be anything living down here, or—'

She jumped and whipped around when she heard something shift among the trash farther back. 'Time to go,' she decided, feeling absolutely no temptation to stick around and wait to be attacked by some unknown creature in the dark. Fortunately, there did seem to be a way out somewhere, because she could feel the tug from a slow current on her legs. Since it was flowing away from the direction of the disturbing sound she just heard, Stephanie decided it would probably be a good idea to follow it. It may even lead to the outside, if she was lucky.

She trudged along for what felt like hours, all the time wondering what had become of her sister and Hoggle—she hoped they were at least in a better place than she was—until she heard a din of splashing and smashing and slicing sounds, growing louder with every step.

Stephanie slowed and crept forward through the sludge at a careful pace, taking extra care not to slip. It was small, but she could see a thin slice of light ahead in the distance, which became steadily larger as she progressed towards the noise. Stephanie blinked to help her eyes adjust to the new source of light. It was white like daylight, and that gave her hope.

Her eyes widened. Backlit by the ever strengthening light, she could now see, waiting for her farther down the tunnel, a mélange of mashers and smashers, crushers and mushers, dicers and slicers, and graters and grinders. She watched some of the solid debris floating by her and waited to see what would happen. Like a giant garbage disposal, the merciless machinery obliterated anything it came in contact with, even metal and bone. It was an overwhelming display of destructive power. For a while, all Stephanie could do was stare, frozen in place. However, the longer she stood there, watching and listening, the more patterns she began to pick up on; and she realized something incredible: the rhythm and timing of these moving machines aligned perfectly with the beat and harmony of Michael Jackson's _Thriller._ If she added a few tucks and rolls here and there, she could dance her way through. Stephanie smiled.

And then she remembered where she was and wrinkled her nose in disgust at the thought of having to roll around in the rancid soup of god-knows-what. She did not even want to take deep breaths of the stench, let alone swim in its source. Stephanie looked up again at the distant light. Squinting, she thought she could make out a small circle of sky. This was her way out. If she wanted to see Sarah and Toby again, then she was just going to have to suck it up.

Stephanie crossed her fingers, closed her eyes and focused on counting the beats in the rhythmic movements of the deadly machines before her, waiting until it was synchronized perfectly with the music in her head. She counted '1-2-3-4—'

And took four steps forward, starting with her right foot first, then she took four steps back, leading with her right foot again. Entering the fray, she nodded her head to one side on beat one, skipped on beat two, and nodded again on beats three and four. In this way, she dodged some spikes coming down from above that stopped at about her shoulder height. Keeping in mind that this would be the part where MJ started to sing, Stephanie continued forward, turned to the side and stuck her arms out straight: one in front and one behind; and bended her knees to slip between the alternating axes on a chopping block. She stuck her butt out and wiggled it up and down while standing in the smooth eye of a circle of undulating saws, then took a step forward and wiggled again. She turned to avoid spikes shooting up out of the floor, and stuck her hands out like claws and pulled like she was ripping at something, twice, then switched the side she was pulling at.

When she was standing just right, she threw her head back and leaned back a bit with one leg out in front, dodging a swinging blade, then took two hops forward. She started in the MJ pose, knees bent slightly, one leg out, the other to the side and stuck one hand on her belt, with the other hand out straight to her side, as she hopped through the opening between two crushing stones.

She landed on her feet with a splash, and did her best not to flinch too much when some of the sludge hit her face as she bent forward and went down with her whole body, then popped back up and made a face like she was yelling "Ha!" She repeated this combination four times, dodging a swinging pendulum each time.

Right after the "down ha's!", she brought her hands up and clapped them right over her head, then brought them down slowly and dragged her feet to one side, dodging more spikes from the floor. She shrugged her shoulders and turned her head to one side, dodging spike from above. She then repeated the move going the other way to dodge the same attacks again from the opposite side.

She used the eight counts for zombie-walking to roll over and dash between two open parts of the ceiling and floor before they crashed shut again; and then took a step forward into a kind of disco pose, with one hand up and one hand down, as a section of the walls came together behind her with a crash, flattening anything unlucky enough to get caught.

Then it was claws up, and she started walking out three counts to the side at a diagonal, then turned to the other side, then back, then back and now walking in the direction she came from first at a diagonal for three counts. One of the blades whirring about clipped an inch off part of her hair, but she supposed it was better than losing an ear or a finger. She jumped between two graters before they closed, then bent over and touched her toes two times to dodge more pendulums. She grimaced as some of the slime got on her chin but kept going, using the next eight counts to dodge more mashing and crashing sections of wall, pausing when she reached the beat to throw her hand up in the air and come back down to air guitar position to avoid walking into another grinder.

While waiting for the break in the grinder's timing, she swiveled her feet a beat and then brought her arm back up and brought it down again, but this time it stopped and took five counts to make it down. She grabbed the air on one side of her then punched it four times on her other side.

It was time to move again. She slid through the open grinder and turned her head four times, then turned her body around with six steps, until she was facing the other direction, dodging more blades. She looked behind her and slapped her leg, then took ten steps backwards, away from the undulating saws she was about to walk into. With a little hop, she made it safely into the eye of another circle of undulating blades, and prepared to repeat the whole dance again for the second half of the deadly obstacle course.

Having just finished the dance routine from hell, Stephanie stood a safe distance away from the end of the giant _garbage disposal_ section, and tried to catch her breath without breathing too deeply. Weaving through whirring blades, slipping past slicing pendulums, keeling over and under crushing blocks—whatever needed doing to make it through, she did. She wished she could say that she had made a _clean_ finish to the end, but by now she was covered in sludge almost completely from head to toe. Shuddering, she decided to straighten up and focus on the wonderful fact that she was now much closer to the exit. Without any large pieces of debris remaining, the current of the sludge had increased in strength. This made it more difficult to walk without slipping, but that hardly mattered anymore, given her current state. What did matter, was that she could see the end of the tunnel. Her exit was blocked by the metal grate covering it, but closer inspection revealed that it had rusted and was so heavily corroded, Stephanie felt confident that she could get it loose with a couple of good kicks.

And she was right. It took a few tries, but on the last kick, her foot hit its target with so much force that the grate nearly flew off. With nothing left to brace herself against, Stephanie slipped and almost spilled out into the orange pool below along with the rest of the trash, but she saw the metal grate dissolving in it at an alarming rate, and instinctively reached out to grab something to stop her fall. Unfortunately for her, that something had thorns. With a silent shriek, Stephanie closed her hands around the thick and sturdy branches of a wild briar growing up the side of the stone wall of wherever she had just come from and swung her legs up to steady herself on it, deciding a handful of thorns was better than instant death. She took half a second to notice how pretty its white, rose-like flowers were. Hanging from the thorny vines like a monkey, Stephanie looked around and take stock of her surroundings. It seemed the tunnel she had just come from was made to dump whatever waste hadn't been thoroughly obliterated by the garbage disposal would then be completely dissolved and diluted by a flowing stream of strong acid or some other kind of extremely caustic substance. It was too wide to jump, but the base of the hearty bramble she had grabbed hold of was rooted on the other bank of the stream, so the sturdy plant had actually grown over the suspicious substance to reach the wall in an arch.

Another disturbing detail Stephanie noticed was that the longer her bleeding hands held onto the branches of the vine she was perched in, the more red streaks appeared on its white blooms. She decided that she had clung to it long enough and began climbing down to its roots on the other side of the caustic stream, as quickly as was possible without putting herself in danger of falling in and melting. By the time her feet touched the ground, the white blooms were a solid blood red, and her hands were full of thorns. Thoroughly creeped out by this eerie occurrence, Stephanie decided to book it and headed further into the swampy area in front of her.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7: A Very Loud Voice**

* * *

Stephanie had begun to regret her decision to head into the swamp after seeing some of the local flora and fauna. The swamp was unusually hot and humid compared to the rest of the Labyrinth. It was also dank and dismal, and reeked of a blend of sickly sweet smells and the stench of rotting meat and flesh.

At first, Stephanie thought it was perhaps from the slime that was still clinging to her or that something had died, but she soon discovered that the plants were to blame. Each possessed a scent that was equally as strange as its appearance. Although this was clearly a swamp or marshland, many of the plants seemed tropical and were very colorful and oddly shaped. It was only after looking very closely that she was able to determine what many of them were supposed to be: from stringy red moss and brightly colored fungi, to black flowers that looked like bats and orchids that looked like skulls, to plants that looked like they had corpse's fingers hanging from them and cone-shaped flowers as tall as human beings, to various pitcher plants and mutated Venus fly traps and other carnivorous plants, to flowers with eyes and cabbage-like plants with actual teeth—all ranging from average to unbelievable sizes. And then there were the insects, which more than a few of the plants snapped at with a greedy hunger. Not only was the air buzzing with your run-of-the-mill mosquitos, treehoppers, and lantern flies, but there were also some real freaks of nature fluttering around. Describing the majority of them would be far too upsetting. Aside from these strange plants and insects, not much else seemed capable of living in this harsh environment. In short, the place was an absolute horror show.

It was just as well she had to keep her eyes on the ground in front of her to make sure she avoided any puddles of acid that may have seeped to the surface. The corrosive substance that had made such short work of the metal gate and garbage sludge seemed to be everywhere. The soil was damp with it in most areas, so she could never escape it completely, and it had begun to eat away at the soles of her shoes.

Stephanie paused when she heard a suspicious rustling sound behind her. She glanced over her shoulder, and then promptly took off running as fast as was possible while avoiding acid puddles and snapping plants. What Stephanie had failed to notice up until this point, was that the small trail of blood drops dripping from her wounded hands had _not_ gone unnoticed, and she was, even now, being pursued by a creeping mass of suspicious vines and tendrils that had been sent out in search of food by an unseen predator. Whatever it was, Stephanie had no intention of finding out. She had no doubt that if the vines seized her, she would be dragged back to their source and devoured.

She was able to put a fair distance between herself and the mysterious predator, but her escape route was abruptly cut off when the path she was on, framed by two free-standing stone statues at disparaging heights, ended right at the edge of what appeared to be an enormous lake of acid.

When she skidded to a halt, a small rock tumbled into the water with a soft _plunk_ and a _sizzle_. Panting and desperate, she was about to turn and attempt to go around it, even though there was no end to it in sight, when a voice spoke.

"Don't disturb the water!"

Stephanie blinked and glanced back at the two statues. Looking more closely, the grotesquely carved figures appeared to be holding objects that vaguely resembled musical instruments, but none like she had ever seen before. They short and squat statue was grinning cheekily at her, while the tall and bony one watched her with a dour expression.

It was the tall, bony one who spoke. "The Swamp Beast lives in there, girl!" he said in alarm. "He's your worst enemy in those waters."

The short and squat one spoke next. "Well, we say _water_ , but it's really acid. He's the only beast that can survive living down there, and he's you're only way to the other side. You _are_ looking to cross the lake, right?"

"Of course she is," the bony one said. "Why else would she be here?"

"Why the long face then?"

"How should I know?"

"I know, maybe she'd like to hear a joke," said the squat one. "So an E-flat, a G-flat, and C-flat walked into a bar, and the bartender said: 'I'm sorry, we don't serve minors here.'" The two statues burst into laughter, slapping their thighs.

"That struck a chord!" crowed the skinny one.

"Be careful of those puns, they'll get you in treble."

"But they're key to my humor."

"And very note-worthy."

Stephanie shifted nervously and glanced anxiously over her shoulder at the creeping vines. A chill went up her spine. They were catching up.

"You know, I think she's being chased," the bony one said, obviously the sharper of the two.

"Why didn't she say so, then?"

The two statues looked at Stephanie and watched as she held up her arm, with the sleeve pulled up, so they could read what she had written on it. Her memo pad had been ruined by the sludge. On her arm was written: "I'm mute. How do I cross the lake?"

The two statues squinted to read the note. "Well, that explains it," the squat one said, with a nod.

"Yes," the bony one agreed. "Like we said before, if you want to cross, you'll need the beast. Now, he's a vicious one—he'll swallow a little thing like you whole without so much as a second thought."

"But music soothes the savage beast," the squat one added with no small amount of pride. "Only _our_ music, if you catch my drift."

"But we won't play for just anyone," the bony one said seriously. "You have to answer our question first. Get it wrong, and you're on your own."

Stephanie, trembling with fear of the ever-approaching vines, gestured quickly for them to get started.

"All right, here it is: 'Without music, life would…?'"

Her mind already racing with thoughts of danger and potential violence toward her by plants, Stephanie did her best to calm down and think rationally. At once, her mind flooded with a myriad of possibilities, but only one in particular seemed to fit in this case. They were musicians, after all, and they seemed to like puns.

The vines were only a foot or two away from her heels now. Stephanie hastily scribbled down the answer on the back of her hand and held it out for them to see.

"Let's see," the bony one said, preparing to read it aloud, "Without music, life would… 'B-flat.'"

The squat one grinned at her. "Well done, my dear! Such a clever girl. You'd be surprised how few get it right."

She decided right then and there that she would never again say another word against the music puns that her school's drama teacher liked to tell.

With their question correctly answered, the two musicians began to play a low, mesmeric tune. Stephanie flinched when the great Swamp Beast suddenly surfaced. It was so much larger than she had imagined.

The tone of the statue's song changed to a haunting lullaby.

With a deep, guttural growl, rather like a menacing purr, a humongous creature that looked like a plesiosaurus emerged from beneath the acid and stretched itself out—from tail to neck, from shore to shore—to form a living causeway across the entire span of the lake. Intimidated, she hesitated for a moment, but when she felt a tendril tickle the back of her ankle, Stephanie wasted no more time hopping onto the immense creature's back to sprint her way across. The vines were still on her trail and had followed her onto the creature's back, but the moment she reached the opposite shore and jumped down from the great beast's snout, the song changed again, and with a deafening roar, the Swamp Beast sank back into the depths of the lake, taking the vines with it. As they burned and dissolved in the acid, an unearthly shriek of pain echoed from far off in the distance.

Panting, Stephanie straightened up and looked back towards the statues across the lake. She paused for a moment and waved at them to show her gratitude, then continued on her way. The trees were so dense that nothing could bee seen through the dark canopy of vegetation above her head. With no idea whether she was still headed in the right direction, the only way to find out was to keep moving.

Meanwhile, once they had left the Wise Man, Sarah and Hoggle found that by walking forward they could move ahead. It made a nice change. Not, however, any more than a nice change, because the maze of hedges turned them left and right and back again so often that it was impossible to make any progress toward the castle. Frequently it could be seen, its spires and turrets looming in the distance above the hedges, but no matter how far and fast they walked, it remained in the distance.

Sarah was still thinking about the Wise Man. "Hoggle," she asked, "how do you tell when someone's talking sense and when he's talking rubbish?"

Hoggle shrugged impatiently. "How should I know? All I knows is we're going to get ourselves well and truly lost in this place. Let me go back."

"Not on your life. You're sticking with me now until we get there. I need to find Stephanie again," Sarah said, wondering how much time they had left.

Hoggle said, "Huh," rather noncommittally, she thought.

Well, she still had his precious string of baubles. He wouldn't get that back until she had found her sister and Toby, and she judged that nothing would induce him to abandon her while she still had his treasure.

Alley, turning, alley, dead end, stone pillar, alley, ornamental shrub, turning, on it went, leading nowhere. Sarah wondered whether it wasn't a closed system, no exit but its entrance, that urn. It was just the kind of puzzle that Jareth would set, to waste what time she had left. But if that were so… She shuddered. Would she have the courage to go back into the urn, and down that ladder, and start over in that awful subterranean passageway?

Down, down, down, down…

She remembered the hands, and the oubliette, and the way Stephanie had suddenly dropped, and that terrifying slashing machine, and Jareth in the beggar costume. She recalled a sentence that their mother had once read aloud to her from a book, as she liked to do when something caught her fancy: _Mind what you say to a beggar, it might be God in disguise._ When she saw her mother again, she would tell her: Or it might just be the King of the Goblins.

She shrugged. How could she be expected to have any respect for Jareth? He was dangerous and powerful, obviously, but he was too aware of it—a show off, really—and mean, and a cheat. He had a certain style to him, she could concede that much. He was not unattractive. But how could you respect, still less admire, someone like him? The best word she could think of to describe him was _cad_.

Alley, turning, alley… on they trudged. Hedged in as they were, they couldn't see that they were not completely alone in the maze. The head and coils of a sea serpent rode along above a hedge quite close to them, though had they actually encountered the beast they might have spotted three little pairs of goblin feet running along beneath it, and heard the grunts of goblins supporting the parts of the serpent. Several times they narrowly missed meeting a mounted goblin, with a lance and flag, who had been sent out by Jareth to look for them and spent an hour galloping at random.

Hoggle was quiet for some time. Then he asked, "Why did you say that about me being your friend?"

"Because you are," she told him candidly. "You may not be much of a friend, but you're the only one I've got in this place."

Hoggle thought about it for a while. Then he said, "I ain't never been no one's friend before."

An enormous blood-curdling roar from somewhere nearby froze the two of them in their tracks.

Hoggle spun around. Pausing only to say, "Keep the stuff!" he started to run back, away from the roar.

Sarah ran after him and seized hold of his sleeve. "Wait a minute," she said angrily. "Are you my friend of not?"

While Hoggle hesitated, another air-trembling roar made up his mind for him. "No! No, I'm not. Hoggle ain't no one's friend. He looks after hisself. Like everyone does." He wriggled his sleeve free. "Hoggle is Hoggle's friend," she heard him yell, as he dashed in the opposite direction from the roaring and vanished into the maze.

"Hoggle!" Sarah called. "You coward!"

She heard another frightful roar, but stayed where she was. The monster, whatever it was, did not seem to be getting any closer to her. "Well," she said, speaking out loud to reassure herself, "I'm not going to be afraid. Things are not always as they seem in this place—that's what the Wise Man said." The sound came again, like pride of starving lions roaring in unison. "It could be some tiny creature," Sarah told herself, "perfectly harmless… just that it happens to have a _very_ loud voice…" After all, by far the loudest person at home was Toby, and he couldn't do you any harm. Was there some law she had never grasped, something to do with the smallest creatures making the most noise? Did dinosaurs roar? She decided not. They would have made a low growling noise. But what about ants, then? Probably they made a terrible noise, somewhere beyond the range of human hearing.

As she was not going to run away, the only alternative was to proceed in the direction they had been going, with some shred of faith that forward meant onward. And so, crossing her fingers for luck, she moved tentatively along the hedge alley. She wished Stephanie was still with her.

When she reached a gap in the hedge and peered cautiously through it, she saw that things were, indeed, not always what they seemed. The roar was coming from a terrifyingly huge beast, but the animal was upside down, suspended by one leg lashed to a tree. It was roaring with pain, because four goblins were tormenting it with nipper sticks, long poles with small, fierce creatures on the end of them that bit like piranhas whenever they were given the chance.

The great beast, who was covered with shaggy, ginger hair, flailed out haplessly at the goblins, but the only result was that its body swung to and fro. That improved the game for the goblins, giving each of them the opportunity to dart in ahead of the others and get in a cruel thrust with the nipper stick before the bellowing, frantically swatting beast had completed its swing back. They were clearly having the time of their lives. They vied with each other in how soft a part of the beast's body they could reach, and how long they could hold the nipping teeth in there before they had to jump out of the way of its desperate arms. So absorbed were they that Sarah was able to leave the hedge and come closer without any risk of their noticing her.

She was appalled by the scene. "The little beasts!" she muttered to herself. She had no doubt that if Stephanie was there, too, she would have taught them all a lesson they would not soon forget.

She looked around for a weapon and found some small rocks. She picked one up, took careful aim and threw it at the nearest goblin. It hit him on the head, knocking the visor of his helmet down his eyes.

"Hey," the goblin exclaimed. "Who turned out the lights?"

He lurched around sightlessly, still swinging and thrusting out his nipper stick. The vicious creature on the end of the stick was glad to bite anything within its reach. When it made contact with another goblin, its teeth sank in.

"Ouch! Ouch!" the bitten goblin shrieked. "Hey, stop that, you."

"Stop what?" asked the first goblin, still prodding out unseeingly.

The second goblin was now under furious assault. "Aargh. Dog weed! Rat's meal!" Spitefully he retaliated by deliberately using his nipper stick.

It was the blinded goblin's turn to wail. "Help! Who's attacking me? Where are the _lights?"_

The other goblins had paused in their tormenting of the beast. This was even better fun. They nudged each other and snickered as they watched the fight.

"Go to it!" one of them shouted.

"Get him!" yelled the other, hopping up and down in his excitement.

Sarah had armed herself with another little rock, and now she threw it. She was astonished at how accurate her aim was today. The rock hit one of the other goblins on the helmet, knocking down his visor. He staggered into his companion, and that one's visor slammed down, too, with the impact.

"Help," cried one.

"It's gone dark," squealed the other.

"What's happened?"

"Lights! Where are the lights?"

Meanwhile the first goblin, still visored and unable to see who was nipping him, decided that his only recourse was to take to his heels. Running blind, he crunched straight into the two others, who were both staggering now. His nipper stick seized its opportunity.

Sarah watched with tears of laughter in her eyes as three goblins dueled with each other, helmets over their faces, while the fourth went on cursing his wounds.

"Ouch! I'm being nipped."

"Help! Lights!"

"Ow. _Stop_ it!"

"Worm rot! Teazel rash!"

The uproar faded as the pack of them pursued each other, yelling and yelping, crashing into hedges, falling over roots.

Sarah wiped her eyes, and her face became serious as she gazed at the great dangling beast. Having delivered it from its tormentors, she had half a mind to leave well enough alone and steal away. But the pity she had felt for the monster was still working in her. She approached it cautiously.

What the shaggy brute saw was another tormentor coming. It let out a terrible roar and aimed a great blow at her.

She was careful to remain just out of reach. All the same, even to stand there and face this gigantic, inverted creature took more courage than she thought she had. She remembered having read somewhere that you have to speak firmly and with confidence to wild animals. So, in her most perfect schoolteacher voice, she told it, "Now, _stop_ that."

Another great roar was on its way from the depths of the monster's body, but the beast stopped mid-roar when it heard itself thus addressed. "Murh?" it said.

Sarah clicked her tongue. "Is that any way to treat someone who's trying to help you?"

The monster still had its doubts. It tried delivering another bellow and aimed a swipe, but there was not much conviction in it.

"Stop it, do you hear?" Sarah was beginning to enjoy herself. It was a role she played well, having had plenty of time to study those who played it every day in the classroom. It was one of the parts she had liked to perform for her mother's amusement.

The monster answered, "Huh?"

"Now do you or do you not want me to get you down from that tree?"

The monster hung there for a bit, reflecting on what its options were. It craned its neck to look up at its tethered ankle, reflected again, then turned its face to Sarah.

"Ludo—down," it said.

It's voice had become almost deferential. Its face was still fearsome, thought—ox-like horns on its head, sunken eyes, an enormous jaw with a fang protruding at each end, and a broad gaping mouth that looked grim.

Sarah steeled herself to approach closely. She felt its warm breath on her face as she stood beside the beast and twisted herself down from the waist to get a look at it the right way up. What she saw surprised her. The great mouth that had looked so grim, with its turned-down corners, had actually been, of course, smiling sweetly at her. Gosh, she reflected, it must often be like that for poor Toby, when people lean over him from the pillow of his crib.

Not only was the monster grinning at her, it now blinked in a goofy sort of way, which could just mean, I-am-in-a-pickle-aren't-I-but-all-the-same-how-d'you-do-and-thanks-for-being-nice-to-me. Sarah returned a cautious smile. She was not going to credit this monster with being, uniquely in this place, what it seemed to be.

"Ludo—down," it repeated.

"Ludo," Sarah asked, "is that your name?"

"Ludo—friend."

"Uh-uh. I've had people say that to me before. So I'm not taking anything for granted. But…" She shook her head and more to herself than Ludo, concluded, "Your eyes are just like Merlin's."

Feeling safer now, she ruffled Ludo's ginger head, between his horns. He smiled, and sighed.

She straightened up and looked at the knot tethering Ludo's leg to the branch. It was a simple bowline, which she could release with one tug. With her hand raised, she paused, and looked down at Ludo. "I do hope you're not going to turn back into a raging monster the moment I let you down from here."

Ludo's response was another roar that made the rocks tremble.

Sarah leaped back. "I knew it! I can't trust _anyone_ in this place."

But then she saw that Ludo, far from aiming a blow at her, was using his paws to rub one or two of the most tender places where the goblins had bitten him with their nipper sticks. "Ludo—hurt," he moaned.

Sarah looked more closely at him. He was covered with little bleeding wounds, under his fur. "Oh," she cried, "you poor thing!" Quickly she reached up, tugged at the rope, and released him. He hit the ground with a mighty thump.

With deep little groans, he sat himself up, and began to rub his wounded head and the sores inflicted upon him. She watched him, even now uncertain whether she should expect him to thank her or eat her.

"Goblins—mean to Ludo," he grimaced.

"Oh, I know that." She nodded, with more assurance than she felt. "They were terribly mean to you," she told Ludo. She moved closer to him and patted his arm. "But it's all right now."

He sniffled, still rubbing. Then his face broke into the most endearing big dumb smile she had ever seen, bigger and dumber even than in any cartoon. "Friend!" Ludo declared.

"That's right, Ludo. I'm Sarah."

"Sarah—friend."

"Yes, I am." She couldn't smile big and dumb like that, but she gave him the best she could do. "And," she added, "I want to ask a favor of you, Ludo."

"Huh?" I have to get to the castle at the center of the Labyrinth. Do you know the way there?"

Ludo shook his great head, still beaming at her.

Sarah sighed, and her shoulders sagged. "You don't know the way either?"

Again, he shook his head, with a small frown of apology.

"I wonder if anyone knows how to get through the Labyrinth."

Sarah rested her chin in her hand, philosophically. He was a dear monster, and likely to prove much more trustworthy than that runty, cowardly pipsqueak, but she could have done with a guide. Well, if no one was going to help her, she would find out what she could do on her own.

She stood up. Ludo stood with her, massively towering over her. 'He may be no guide,' she thought, 'but it's nice to have him on my side.'


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8: No Problem**

* * *

As Stephanie continued to walk the air cooled and the land began to change. The ground hardened and there were no more pools of acid. She saw fewer and fewer of those strange plants and insects, and more tall, dark trees with wide trunks and high branches. Stephanie tried to climb one, to see if she could spy what direction the castle was in, but its branches were too high for her to reach and its trunk was too smooth for her acid-worn sneakers to get any traction. When her last attempt ended with her landing flat on her back, she decided that she should probably quit before she really hurt herself. It would be dangerous if she received a wound that prevented her from moving while she was here in this place, all alone.

She stood up and was about to move on when she heard a small voice cry out in alarm. "Help! Ma! Da! Help me! Someone, please!"

Stephanie stopped and looked around. About a couple Yards off, in the shadow of a tree, a small creature was fighting for its life against a carnivorous plant, which shared an uncanny resemblance to Audrey II from _Little Shop of Horrors,_ and was using the same kind of vines that had been chasing her earlier. The little creature in its clutches was the size of a pigeon and had wings like a bird, but was definitely not a bird itself. If anything, the creature looked part feline. Whatever it was, it must still be a baby, because it had more fuzz than feathers and it was crying out for its parents. For all she knew this poor creature could be another vicious meat eater, but Stephanie, moved with pity at the sight of a scared child, decided to save it.

She looked around for something she could use as a weapon, preferably something she could throw. Sticks, twigs, pebbles—the only thing large enough to make an impact on Audrey II was a thick log that was too large and heavy for her to be able to completely lift off of the ground. She glanced from the log to the plant to the little creature struggling to stay in the air. There was a slight downward slope in the ground towards the plant. Stephanie grit her teeth, readjusted the angle of the log, and gave it a strong kick to send it rolling. It bowled straight into Audrey II and pinned the main part of the plant to the ground. Audrey II gave a roaring shriek and the tentacles loosened momentarily. The little creature used that instant as an opening to wriggle free and escape.

It beat the wings on its back frantically as it flew towards her. "Run!" it shouted, passing her to lead the way for their escape. Stephanie didn't have to be told twice. She wanted to be well and truly out of reach before the carnivorous plant recovered and came after them again. They did not stop until they felt that they had reached a safe distance.

Stephanie stood bent over with her hands on her knees and the little creature was sprawled out on its back like an exhausted kitten. They were both panting. "Thanks for saving me, Stephanie." It said after a while.

She was surprised to be called directly by name by this creature she had never met before. She wondered how it knew. She hoped he wasn't some kind of mini spy sent here to distract her with his cuteness.

"I'm not a spy," it said, forming its beaked face in a small frown. "I only read your mind. Everyone from the Forest of Echoes can do that."

'Forest of Echoes?' she thought, surprised once again. She wasn't sure how she felt about having her mind read without her permission. The idea was kind of unnerving.

The little creature cocked its head at her. "Yes, it's the place you're heading towards right now. We're on the border between it and The Carnivorous Swamp right now. And I can't help reading your mind. It's not like I'm doing it because I want to, although maybe it's a good thing I can, since you can't talk," it explained a bit defensively.

Stephanie shrugged. The little guy had a point. It was a lot easier to communicate when she didn't have to constantly stop to write everything down. He looked young, but she wondered if he or someone he knew might know the way to the castle, or if anyone had seen her sister and Hoggle and could point her in their direction.

It shook its head. "I haven't seen anyone like that," he said, receiving a clear image of Sarah from her memories, "but I know a way you can get to either her or the castle." He brightened considerably. "I know, since you saved me, as thanks I can show you how to get through the Forest and take you to _that place."_

'That place?' Stephanie asked silently.

"Deep in the forest there's a special portal that can take you to anywhere you want in the Labyrinth."

Stephanie's eyes widened. Now _that_ sounded very promising. Almost too good to be true. She looked long and hard at the little creature, who was smiling innocently at her, and decided it probably wasn't a trick. He seemed to genuinely want to help. 'But… knowing this place, there must be some kind of catch,' she thought.

"Well, my Ma and Pa did say that place was dangerous," it said, "but we're really far away from where you need to be, and you seem like you're in a hurry."

Stephanie conceded to this observation with a nod. He wasn't wrong that she needed to hurry. The sooner she and Sarah saved Toby, the better. Besides, after everything that she had already faced, how much worse could it get? She gave the little creature a determined smile and thought, 'In that case, count me in.'

It smiled, happy to be of use, and, together, the two of them headed deep into the Forest of Echoes.

Jareth had been observing Sarah's progress through the crystal ball when one of the goblins spoke. "What about the other one?" he asked. "What happened to her?"

The Goblin King raised an elegant eyebrow. "The sister? She is of no consequence." he said dismissively. It was Sarah who had made the wish and, therefore, only Sarah could undo it. No matter whether she solved the Labyrinth or how she much pleaded, he had no obligation to return Toby to Stephanie. She had no power here on her own.

However, he was slightly curious as to how that defiant little brat might faring. Even that stubborn girl must be crying helplessly and cursing her silence by now while she sat in the middle of a miserable heap of waste. A sharp smirk formed on Jareth's lips at the thought. He certainly would not mind seeing that. With a graceful wave of his hand the image in the crystal ball switched from Sarah entering the Forbidden Forest and losing the ginger beast named Ludo to show Stephanie traversing the Forest of Echoes with her new guide. Jareth narrowed his eyes, startled.

She never should have gotten that far. She should still be struggling to navigate the subterranean waste shoots. How could she have gotten past his garbage disposal? What could have possibly possessed her to choose that way? He would have been impressed if he was not so concerned. No matter what he threw at them this pair of disturbing sisters continued to exceed his expectations in the worst ways possible.

The goblins laughed.

"She's going the wrong way!" one said.

The goblins crowed and cackled with laughter.

"She'll never make it to the castle now," another added.

"Silence," Jareth snapped.

Those goblins who knew what was good for them immediately shut their traps.

Jareth was disturbed but he kept his expression carefully neutral, so as not to show any sign of weakness. Things were not as simple as they seemed. He disliked the Forest of Echoes, as even he had trouble dealing with its residents, yet Stephanie appeared to have somehow managed to befriend one of them. Because of the nature of all who inhabited it, there were no secrets in that forest. If one of them told her about the portal, then all could be lost. He had to make sure that, in event she actually did succeed in the improbable task, the two sisters would never be able to finish reaching the castle together in time to reclaim Toby.

He had to stop them, before it was too late. Given how far she had been able to make it on her own, even without her voice, Stephanie would most likely be too crafty to be tricked into accepting enchanted fruit from a stranger. Sarah, who was in the process of becoming shrewder, would most likely hesitate as well, but, then again, in Sarah's case it did not have to be a stranger. He would make her forget, and he would make certain that she would be trapped somewhere her troublesome sister could not reach, even with the help of a magic portal.

Hoggle was hoggling around the hedge maze still, minding his own business, and most of all minding that that girl had gotten his jewels. He'd tried to please both her and Jareth, and that's what you got for trying to please everyone. No baubles.

When Sarah screamed, he heard her. It stopped him in his tracks, which were heading for the start of the Labyrinth. He listened, heard a second scream, wrestled with his rudimentary conscience, came to a decision, and began to run in her direction. He knew his way around this place better than the stupid goblins in the castle. "I'm coming, missy," he shouted.

He galloped around the corner straight into a pair of knees.

Jareth was wearing his cloak and looking quite handsomely fiendish. "Well," he said pleasantly, "if it isn't you."

"It isn't me," Hoggle told him, trembling.

"And where are _you_ going, hmm?"

"Ah…" Hoggle was staring at Jareth's boots. "Ah...," he said in a different tone of voice, to hold his audience's attention. Then he spent a little while scratching his backside, suggesting that a person can't be expected to answer a question while he's plagued with an itch.

Jareth was content to wait, with a smile on his lips.

"Er…" At last Hoggle came up with it. "The little missy, she gave me the slip… er… but I just hears her now…"

Jareth's eyes narrowed.

"So I'm… er… er, I'm going to fetch her and then lead her straight back to the beginning. Just like you told me." He wished the King of the Goblins would kick him, or pelt him with slugs, or do anything, anything but smile that nerve-racking, pleasant smile.

"I see," Jareth nodded. "I thought for a moment you were running to help her. But no, you wouldn't. Not after my warnings. That would be stupid.

"Ha-ha," Hoggle agreed, with a trembling heart. "Oh, ha-ha-ha. Stupid? You bet it would be stupid. _Me?_ Help _her?_ After your warnings?"

Jareth elegantly inclined his head to examine Hoggle's belt. "Oh, dear," he said, seeming concerned, "poor Hoghead!"

"Hoggle," Hoggle growled.

"I just noticed that your lovely jewels are missing."

"Uh…" Hoggle looked down at his sadly unadorned belt. "Oh, yes. So they are. My lovely jewels. Missing. There now. Better find 'em, eh? But first," he promised in a profoundly reliable voice, I'm off to fetch the little missy back to the beginning of the Labyrinth." He thought of trying a wink, but decided not to. "Just like we planned," he said, and started to march obediently away.

"Wait," Jareth told him.

Hoggle froze. His eyes closed.

"I have a better plan, Hoggle. Give her this."

With a wave of his left hand, Jareth produced a bubble from the air. In his hand it became a crystal ball. He waited for Hoggle to turn around and tossed it to him. Hoggle caught it. It had become a peach. Hoggle looked at it, dumbfounded. "Wha—What is it?"

"A present."

Hoggle's eyebrows beetled. "It… it ain't going to harm the little missy, is it?" he asked slowly.

"Oh." Jareth placed his hand over his heart. "Now, why the concern?"

Hoggle pursed his lips. "Just… curious."

"Give it to her, Hoggle. That's all you have to do. And all you have to know."

Hoggle was torn between fearful obedience, which was familiar to him, and affection, to which he could not have put a name. "I…" He stood more erect. "I won't do nothing to harm her." He reckoned that such a moment of defiance might have earned him a pint of earwigs down his breeches, at the least.

Instead, Jareth replied with that pleasant smile that by now was like broken glass on Hoggle's nerves. "Come, come, come, Hogbrain," the Goblin King laughed teasingly, "I'm surprised at you. Losing your ugly head over a _girl_."

"I ain't lost my head," Hoggle scowled.

"You don't imagine that a young girl could ever _like_ a repulsive little scab like you, do you?"

Hoggle was stung. "She said she was…" He stopped himself mid-blurt, but it was too late.

Jareth gave him a coy, sideways grin. "What? Bosom companions? Was that it, Piggle? Piggly-Wiggly? Friends, are you?"

Hoggle, red-faced, was blinking at his boots again. "Don't matter," he muttered.

Jareth's voice came back crisply. "You give her that, Hoggle, or I'll have you tipped straight into the Bog of Eternal Stench before you can blink."

In miserable obedience, Hoggle nodded. "Yes."

He had started to hurry on his way, assuming the interview was over, when he heard Jareth's voice again. He stopped, rigid, not daring to turn around.

"I'll tell you what." Jareth had his head back and was looking down his nose at Hoggle. "If she ever kisses you—I'll turn you into a prince."

Hoggle knew there was going to be a catch. "You will?"

There was a catch. "Prince of the Land of Stench."

Jareth thought that was a capital joke. He was still laughing as he disappeared.

Hoggle remained standing still, staring at the peach in his hand. His registered several emotions at once. Amusement was not among them.

The bright, savage figure that had leaped out in front of Sarah was a Firey, and Fireys are _wild_. Are they ever. They are wild about how wild they are.

She screamed a second time and shrank away from the creature, hands folded across herself. It was a bit like a scrawny fox, with a long snout that opened very wide, and a tufted tail. Its fur was red-pink-purplish. It walked, or rather bounded, on two chickenlike legs. Its staring eyes were blue, with red pupils. It had very long fingers, which seemed to be perpetually drumming.

"What's happening?" it demanded.

She shook her head and opened her mouth to frame some sort of answer, but all that came out was a sob.

"Now cut that out right now, you hear?" the Firey told her.

"Yeah," agreed another one from behind her, making her start around in fright. "That ain't gonna do no good."

"No, sir!" hollered a third one, prancing from the trees and leering wildly at her.

"No, sir." A fourth one appeared.

And a fifth. "Hey!" it said to her, rousingly, "Come _on,_ now."

She looked around at them all in great alarm. "What do you want?"

"Wa- _hoo_!" one replied, rapping out a fast rhythm with his fingers on a rock.

"Hoot!" another said, setting up a cross-rhythm.

"What, us?" asked a third.

Sarah nodded.

"Why, we're just after havin' ourselves a good time."

"Oh," Sarah said, confused. "I see."

They all slapped their sides at her demure reply and laughed maniacally. One let out a whoop and hit his hand on a log.

"She _sees_!" it howled.

"Yeeeahhh!"

"Hey- _ey_!"

"You can't stick around like that," one told her.

"No," said another. "You gotta shake it loose a bit."

"Yeahhh. Quit crying. Let it all hang _out_."

They leaped around, hooting and clapping. One struck his finger on the ground and it ignited, like a match. He used it to light a bonfire, then blew his finger out nonchalantly.

Sarah was still timidly backing away.

"Oh, _yeah_. What you need is a little mess-around."

"Yes, sir!"

A Firey jumped over a pair of tree stumps and started using them as drums. The rest broke into an up-tempo dance number, clicking and drumming their fingers as they circled around her.

Sarah watched in astonishment, standing near the bonfire. She couldn't have fled if she'd wanted to, with them capering all around her, but in any case she was rooted to the spot by their antics.

She was horrified to see one of the Fireys pluck out his eyes, shake them like dice, and throw them. "Yeah," the others all cheered, crowding around to look at them. "Snake eyes!" Then the owner of the eyes snatched them up, tossed them in the air like peanuts, and caught them in his eye sockets. The rest were hooting and dancing and clapping. As though to outdo the first, another Firey took his head off his shoulders and threw it in the air. It was kicked and headed around like a soccer ball. Another took his leg off, and with a delicate chip shot hit the head back onto its body. They all cackled and slapped their thighs. The drummer went wild.

Meanwhile, the rest crowded around Sarah and tried to persuade her to join in the dance. After seeing their wild pastimes, she was shy and nervous of them. But she thought she had their number now—just crazy good-timers, out of their skulls—and she was no longer frightened, not even when one tried to lift her head from her shoulders.

"Hey!" she protested. "Ouch!"

"It don't come off!" the Firey exclaimed.

 _"What?"_ The rest were astonished, and they all gathered around in the attempt to decapitate her.

"Ow!" she said, more sternly. "Stop it!"

"You're right! It's _fixed_ on!"

"Of course it's fixed on," she told them.

"Where you goin' with a head like that, lady?"

"Well, I'm… oh!" The hopelessness of her predicament flooded back, and she started to sob again. She missed Stephanie and Ludo terribly, and Hoggle, too.

"Hey! Now what's up, little lady?"

Sarah hiccupped. "Oh! I'm trying to get to Jareth's castle at the center of this Labyrinth…"

"Holy Mo!"

"You _sure_ you know what you're doin', lady?"

"Yes," Sarah said firmly.

"Well, hot dog! How _about_ that!"

The drummer shouted, "She _knows_ what she's doin'," and he gave her a drumroll on the tree stumps.

"Yeah," the others said, grinning and bopping.

"But I've only got a few hours left," Sarah told them. She wondered how few.

The Fireys whistled and grinned at each other.

"Well, that ain't _no_ problem."

Sarah looked up at them through her tears, with a gleam of hope in her eyes. "It isn't?"

"Why, shoot! No!"

"We'll take you there."

"Yeah," another squawked wildly, waving his fingers above his head. "How about us comin' _along_ a little, hey?"

The rest cavorted in a frenzy of excitement, hooting and screeching.

"A castle, oh, wow!"

"Well," Sarah said doubtfully, "it's kind of you, but…"

"You think we're just _too wild?"_ The Firey's head rose up from his shoulders as he spoke, and he had to grab it in his hands and press it back into place.

The drummer did a big roll. "Why, _shoot._ We ain't _that_ wild."

"Oh, yes, we are," another called. "Hey!" He formed himself into the shape of an ostrich, ran two steps, and exploded. As he put his pieces together again, the rest howled and clapped.

"Cool, man!"

"Now look, little lady, you can't just go walkin' through this place on your ownsome."

Sarah sniffed sadly. "Well, I did have a friend just—"

"Hey! Fellow with clothes on, right?"

"Hoggle?"

"That Hoggle, yeah! Oh, wow! Everyone around these parts knows Hoggle."

"Really?" Sarah asked.

"Sure. Hog and me, we're like that." The Firey crossed his fingers.

"Oh. We…"

Before she could say any more, Sarah felt herself being propelled along by the Fireys. All she could see ahead of them was a rocky wilderness.

"Now the castle's just down along around this way," one assured her.

"Wait, I still have to find my sister! Are you sure you _know_ how to get to the center of the Labyrinth?" she asked nervously. She had precious little time to waste, and she thought she would have preferred to be left to find her own way. But there was no escaping the Fireys, who had hold of her clothes in their long fingers and were hopping enthusiastically along with her in tow.

"She says she has to _find_ her sister!"

"Do _we_ know how to get to the center of the Labyrinth!"

They all burst out laughing. Their heads flew up in the air, and their arms had to detach themselves to catch the heads.

"Why, lady!" one screeched. "We may be _wild_ but we sure know where we're goin'."

"Yeahhh!" the rest concurred.

"You wanna find your sister? We're _helpin'_ you look for her. You wanna go to the castle? We're _takin'_ you to the castle. Ain't we just doin' those things?"

"Yeeeahhh!"

"So you come on along with us, little lady, and you ain't gonna have _no_ problem."

Jareth was watching Sarah from the castle. In his crystal he saw her distraught face looking around for a way to escape.

He held Toby up in front of his sister's picture. "Look, Sarah," he murmured. "Is this what you're trying to find?"

Toby gaped at Sarah's face in the crystal. He held a hand out to touch it.

Jareth chuckled to himself and put his arm around Toby. "So much trouble for such a little thing," Jareth said, shaking his head. He looked at Toby's puzzled face. "But not for long. Soon she'll forget all about you, my fine fellow, and that other, less pleasant, sister of yours. Just as soon as Hoggle gives her my present, Sarah will be beyond Stephanie's reach. She'll forget—everything."


End file.
